A poem for Jim

This is a poem posted in honour of the memory of one of my favourite people, who has gone Home after a long illness, to be with his wife and friend.

Jim Loftus

Husband to dearly missed Eileen, father to beloved Nabla and Roisin, father-in-law to Allan (and Shane), grandfather to Dara and the babies, godfather to many, including my brother Baz (of which I was always insanely jealous)...

History teacher to me and hundreds more, including the wonderful students in Nigeria he never forgot and often told us dreadful Irish students about (little birds with their mouths open, they wanted to learn so much)...

Good friend to the Queen Parents and dozens more...

Intellectual, wit, anarchist in his own way, owner of the greatest book collection I saw before I went to Trinity College library, crossword fanatic...

Trivial Pursuit cheat (not that he ever needed to)...

Mentor to me always, mostly with a grin at my naivety/ stupidity/ whatever, always with a kind word, a witty comeback and sound advice...

The subterfuge we both descended to in order to get in a round for each other, subterfuge I never won...

Wearer of red socks, pipe-smoker, dog-lover (Juko, Scamp, Flop, Fiddler)...

Clareman, no, Kilfenora man...

A man with stars in his eyes, the soul of a poet and the pointedness of a swordsman.

Goodbye Sir James. Sir.

My life is emptier for your absence.
My soul is better for your influence on it.

I'm sorry I crashed your car when I was three.
It wasn't Nabla's fault.
Honest.

It was mine.

Say hello to Eileen and Mr. O'Neill for me.
Tell Eileen I miss her dreadfully still.
Tell Mr. O'Neill I still can't call him Jimmy. And I still can't sing Pythagoras.

I'm sorry I didn't know the last time I saw you was the last time. But we had a nice chat in the kitchen that night didn't we.

A poem for the end of the century
By Czeslaw Milosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.

Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.

Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?

To a saintly man
--So goes an Arab tale--
God said somewhat maliciously:
"Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They could not praise you."

"And I," answered the pious one,
"Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They would not care for you."

To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?

Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.

Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity

We take our comfort where we can get it.

What a friggin' disappointment.

The Queen Mother valiantly tried to give me a flavour of the match by text as I didn't get out of work in time to get the Setanta package on the interweb. She was actually way ahead of the Guardian minute-by-minute reporter; who was too busy watching the match to actually tell any of us what was going on.

Which proves yet again that my brother is his mother's son in a lot of ways. My brother always remembers he should be typing when it's exciting. Which is why his minute-by-minutes are better than his colleagues. It was too much to hope that he would be doing the commentary. No doubt he was somewhere far more interesting than in front of a creaking laptop for the match.

(For all you Canadian readers, I am talking about the Ireland - France rugby world cup pool game that took place last night and was the perfect end to a perfect week chez Queenie).

You leave a country for two years, and the rugby team collapses. I have heard all kinds of rumours which I am not going to repeat here because according to certain players who couldn't kick a ball straight if it killed him last night that they are not true.

Well, he may not have been kicked out of his own house, but he should be now! That's all I am going to say.

Kicked out of the country more like. Unlike his manager I disagree that his performance should be judged on how much possession he gets. Where I come from, his performance should be judged on what he does with the possession he gets.

Call me stupid, if you like, but you shape the clay you are given.

Anyways, I didn't see his performance so I can't really talk about it.

What I can say is that some of the rumours I have heard are about a Munster - Leinster split in the team.

A what?

Is this friggin' true?

Is this all we are capable of as a nation?

We endure a thirty year conflict that pits neighbour against neighbour at its lowest points, emerge from it stunned and grateful, get a few jobs, make a little money, and now a crowd of overpaid middle class boarding school boys are having a Munster - Leinster split? Over rugby?

I friggin' give up.

I had a crappy week. But I think everyone else did too, so it must have been some astrological trine or something annoying everyone this week.

The third last shitty thing that happened to me this week (the last being the knowledge that we were going down 25 - 3 to France which I received in a text message from the QM) was that I found out that I should know by the way I am treated in work how valued I am.

That's good to know. I'm glad they cleared that up.

After I heard O'Sullivan's post-match interview I realised what they meant. It's all about what kind of possession you get, you see (in staff terms). Nothing at all about what you do with said possession.

Well, we saw how well that worked for the Irish rugby team yesterday.

Himself and I went to Sugar Spice, the Jamaican diner to comfort ourselves with jerk chicken and then we got some dvds to while away the evening.

Seraphim Falls.

I never heard of this movie before. Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan chase each other across the Wild West in a John Toll-filmed (Braveheart, Legend of the Falls) landscape that just jumps off the screen at you (snowy Oregon mountains and New Mexico).

It cheered me right up. Restored my faith in Irish men on a world stage.

Liam Neeson was wearing a pair of slinky suede trousers that showed off the longest pair of male legs in Hollywood. He had a gun as long as his legs, and a grudge to match.

Pierce Brosnan was doing his James Bond schtick: but this time it was in the forest with no toys and no women.

He is actually a good actor. You can see why he was such a good Bond. It was the possessions that did for him towards the end of his reign in that franchise. His attempts to light a fire to dry off after getting shot in the arm and falling into a winter river are fantastic.

Then we watched Taxi Driver (not Taxi!) because Himself has never seen it.

That's right. Himself had never seen it.

I'd forgotten how good it is.

Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Sometimes so does a woman.

Watch this space.

What's going to happen this evening?

The Queen Dad is in Paris today; one of the many thousands of Irish people who must be wondering what the hell they are doing in the city of light on a night when it is possible that our rugby dream is going to be washed down the toilet.

I am wandering around in a state of complete bewilderment, no doubt engendered by my prolonged absence from the Irish rugby scene.

Stringer dropped for some bloke I've never heard of? WTF?!

All my memories of our recent successes in rugby are tinged with little baldy Peter wrestling the ball away from scrums twenty times his size and passing it to our Ronan, who then kicks it to suave Brian/ suave (other tall guy I can't remember because it's 6am) who then puts it over the touch line.

I think I remember Peter getting dropped once before and the results being an unmitigated disaster. Or maybe he was injured. I don't have a brain that can remember these things well.

And the Queen Dad is in Paris so I can't ask him.

Anyways, I am in confused shock. No doubt Stringer has had a string of bad games that I know nothing about. Because Eddie Sullivan wouldn't make a stupid decision would he?

And what's all this about the guys having 'personal problems'?

The last time I was in Paris, France annihilated Ireland in the Five Nations and the Queen Mum and I had to put up with it in a tiny room in the Hotel des Arts in Montmartre.

I hope that the Queen Dad gets a moment in the sun. At least he is on a pharma-junket, so the hotel room should have enough room to swing a cat in celebration if necessary.

Anyone who feels like sending me text updates this evening will be my friend for life. I shall be hanging onto the internet like a mad woman, trying to get the game on Setanta. Which is nigh on impossible.

Stupid internet pay per view.

Speaking of the unspeakable, on his recent visit here, the Queen Dad gave me Cormac MacCarthy's The Road to read. I asked him what it was like. He kind of shivered (strange for him) and said: 'it's a bit intense. It's a bit frightening. It's a strange strange book'.

I read it.

I couldn't be in a room on my own when I was reading it.

This book blows the bleak, post-apocalyptic vision of Margaret Atwood and her ilk right out of the ooze. It is delivered in McCarthy's simple prose, which as usual contains huge ideas in small sentences (how does he do that).

Then I read Charlie Brooker the other day:

This week Charlie finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy ("which might as well come with a razor-sharp spine, so you can slash your wrists once you've finished it"). He continued playing Bioshock on the Xbox360 ("but I can only play it if someone's in the room with me, because it's too scary to tackle alone"); and he failed to quit smoking for the 18 millionth time.

I'm glad it's not me.

If this book does not get you sorting out your compostibles from your paper waste, then nothing will.

A man and his son wander around a post-apocalyptic north american continent, heading for the (Pacific I think) ocean. The world has been on fire. The remains of the built and natural world still smoulder. Ash settles on everything. The sun is blotted out. Hordes of cannibal wildmen roam the land searching for food and weapons.

I kept reading bits of it out to Himself in a panic. 'Would we survive, babe?' I kept asking. 'Sure', he said.

Then I got to the bit that told me what happened to the man's wife.

I'd head north, meself. Fuck the ocean. They couldn't see it anyway.

Anyways, up the lads, I'm wearing my rugby shirt to work today and they had better not let me down.

The right to reside in the tree

So Canada Post never bothered to get my passport signed for in the Immigration Office in New York. Consequently while they were 'looking for it urgently', it stayed there for a while, got its shiny new PRC stamp in it and found its way back to me today.

Via Canada Post of course.

I waved it at Himself (well the note from the postman saying 'while you were out...' anyways) and said, now, I'm in. Finally. Does that mean I get to live in the Tree House? Previous readers of this blog will know that the Tree House is where the big boys get to hang out. Girls don't often get to hang in the Tree House. Well this one doesn't anyways.

No, Himself said. You just get to live in the tree.

Himself was not being defeatist. It's just Himself has been dealing with an extended period of Queenie asking to be let into the Tree House at work and the boys saying no and Queenie coming home in tears, and claiming she's going home to Ireland so he'd better sort out the CD collection. Or wanting to move to South America, or Alberta, immediately!, before he's even had his supper, so he's pretty much defined his position on all things boreal-based and habitationally-inclined for the moment and is having none of the boys ever again.

Even if it does mean voting for the Greens.

Well, how the hell am I going to get into the Tree House now, I asked Him.

Cut the tree down, he suggested.

I love the fact that Himself is an anarchist by instinct.

Anyways, I feel a bit better now. It was pretty hard to say goodbye to the Queen Parents and the neighbours in the same week, and then to lose the boss, and then get a new boss without any pretext of a competition, and have Canada Post not give a shit about my passport and nobody care about the fact that I need a pension and to get my teeth seen to, and to see good friends not let into the Tree House either. Etc.

But you can't keep a good lumberjack down, can you.

Can I spend the night with...?

No you can't.

Multiply that by one hundred.

That was last night.

Yes, the teenager is back. For a few days anyway.

And she is out with her friends, as teenagers are. But she wants to spend the night.

There are two problems with this.

One, she never actually spends the night where she says she's going to. So we cannot calculate odds and say, yes, that place is fine. Because we don't know where she'll end up.

Two, there has been a spate of teenage violence in Halifax in the last two weeks. A sixteen year old stabbed four security guards at a teenage disco last weekend and nearly killed one of them. Three sixteen year old girls attacked an elderly lady with iron table legs (for no apparent reason) at 9.30pm on the Commons and were set upon by the crusties who hang out there who held them until the cops came.

Plus all the usual swarmings etc.

Now, I'm pretty sure Kitty wouldn't stab anyone, or attack someone's granny with a table leg, but she has been known to throw rocks at her own house (there must be some Irish in her somewhere), so no, she can't spend the night.

Then she got home at eleven pm on a Thursday and started with the 'It's so crap having an eleven pm curfew. Nobody else has an eleven pm curfew' rant.

By eighty eight times.

I listed all the other sixteen year olds who have one.

They are all losers, apparently.

I have to laugh. It's all exactly the same as the conversations I had with my mother. Except this time the Queen Mother was sitting listening to me having this conversation with a sixteen year old. There's even an annoying little brother butting in.

Karma.

This week has been one of massive shifts and changes and it's all a bit unsettling.

I am currently spying on the new neighbours. Mike and Kate and Connor and Mika and the dogs left on Wednesday for Ottawa and the new neighbours are a couple with a baby who are teachers and triathletes at the weekend. They have just arrived on their matching bicycles sans baby and are now walking around the house checking every inch of the exterior very carefully.

I'm sure they'll be lovely.

Himself is despondent. Not without cause.

Craig and Lyse whom we love and who were the best neighbours ever left a month ago and were replaced by a nurse who is on disability which means she sleeps all day and moves furniture around all night and has the LOUDEST LONGEST SEX in the world.

Every night.

When she and 'Peter your Lover' (that's how he signs the notes he leaves on her door) are having loud energetic sex and we are in the garden we have to be sure not to look up at her windows because she often likes to have sex against the window.

It was poor Himself who copped that one night when he was putting the garbage out.

It's actually quite annoying.

At least we know it's not her back is causing her disability.

What's most annoying though is that Peter the Lover usually arrives around seven, so she has long, loud showers in the hour preceding that, which is when Himself arrives home from work covered in diesel actually needing a shower and as our pipes are connected, there's never any water for him.

He got so pissed off yesterday he turned the hot water on and left it to run while she was abluting.

I have never ever seen him do something vindictive. But all his male buddies are abandoning him, see, so poor Himself is upset.

We need a house in its own gardens with no neighbours, and a dog for Himself to play with. That's what we need.

The baby has arrived in a battered old station wagon (the baby is not driving it obviously).

Well, a battered old station wagon is usually a good sign.

And the D key has fallen off my laptop. No D, no K, and two of the cursor keys are now gone.

I possibly may need a new keyboard.

I hate the end of the summer. The Queen Parents leave tonight and then it's Labour Day weekend and then it's back to nose on grindstone for another four months.

The good news is that we will be in Ireland from 22nd December - 5th January.

Well, good news for some anyways.

Why are sleeplessness and marriage so terrifying?

So I didn't sleep much last night.

First of all, I had a strong coffee after my meal, which is not something I should do without a bucketful of wine to counteract it.

Second of all, I came home and blogged when I was tired which made me wired.

Then I read The Blair Years until my eyes hurt.

And then when I turned the light out I realised that there was roadworks being done somewhere, so that was it for me.

I got up at two and emailed Deveaux in Vietnam, figuring he'd be up.

What the fuck are you doing up at this hour, he responded.

WTF indeed.

It was after three the last time I remember looking at the clock.

Then Himself bounced in the door at 6.30am, got into bed and started talking about getting married.

Needless to say I was not in the mood to talk about anything, much less the single most terrifyinig concept in my world.

A world that includes grizzly bears and drowning.

I think I hurt Himself's feelings. Which I am sorry for, not just because I shouldn't do it, but because he just looks so damned sad when I do. Makes me feel like a nasty Queenie, which I don't mean to be. I'm just a sleepless Queenie, alone and adrift in a big bed for too many hours.

How ironic that I would spend a large part of my twenties feeling alone and adrift because the man I was with refused to contemplate the idea of marriage, and now that I am in my thirties and am with the only man in the world I could probably stay married to, the thought of it makes me feel alone and adrift.

I am probably over-analysing it as I normally do with the choices in life.

However, being a good Irish Catholic girl by instinct (if not by reputation), I think a bit of over-analysing is quite proper.

I was at a funeral recently at which they offered Communion and I didn't go up and told my (Jewish) friend that I wasn't because I was in a state of mortal sin. She just looked at me like I was an idiot and said 'do you follow the rules?'

To which I had no answer.

Some of them, I do.

And saying I do would be one of them.

Not that I would ever get married in a church or by a priest, but I would say I do and mean it.

Not that everyone doesn't I suppose.

But that's kinda scary isn't it.

It's like when I was trying to pass my driving test and I couldn't and there were people whom I knew for a fact to be utter morons and they could pass their test.

And eventually I got so impatient with my own inability to cross whatever psychological barrier needed to be passed to do it that I just went out and did it.

Hopefully, this will be the same.

It's not like I have to make my mind up anytime soon. Himself being wedded to the woman who WOULD BE WEDDED TO HIM FOREVER.

What happens when you run out of steam?

Hey, I justed turned 35 and I'm wondering whether I should be settling into nicely into painting the back garden. I am still addicted to painting the town red. I think that Dublin right now is a seriously tough place to have a relaxed lifestyle - it's so manic and expensive and it really suits a manic and expensive life. So what happens when I run out steam? Meath? Leitrim? Wicklow?

I have been thinking about this comment for some time. As Luke is the guardian of the spirit of the girl I used to be, am now and always will be, I feel obliged to tackle it.

What happens when you run out of steam?

The Queen Parents took me out for a very nice fish supper with a nice chardonnay to wash it down and then retired; Himself is working nights tonight, which involves playing cards with Greg and keeping the refinery going; absolutely no distractions for Queenie for the next couple of hours.

I have made a nice mix of Cat Power You are Free, Patrick Watson Close to Paradise, and The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs to keep me company.

The northwest wind that was sniffing around Halifax for a few days is gone and when we left the restaurant tonight it was muggy and warm again. I dropped the QPs home and then headed up Spring Garden to get some cash and a cab.

It was hoppin'.

For a Monday.

People walking out into the traffic in that 'the air is warm so I'm going to be crazy' way people have when they realise the summer is still on.

What happens when you run out of steam?

You sniff the air and it is intoxicating, but even though your body itches to head down towards your favourite bar, your brain propels you into the ATM unit and back to the cab rank because it is Monday night and you have a week ahead tomorrow.

I sat into the cab and clicked myself in and told cabbie where I wanted to go and sat back for the rush that is a cab drive down the Northwest Arm on a hot August night.

In the absence of going crazy on a Monday night when I have nowhere to be and money to spend, I love summer taxi rides with the window open. I love being propelled forward through the night by a stranger who may or may not talk to you about something interesting or crazy or just banal.

Sometimes the idea is better than the reality, isn't it.

We hit a light pretty much straight away. It was a long one. I started to notice a weird smell in the cab. Then I noticed that cabbie's hair was a bit 'messy'.

Also, he was gnawing his finger knuckles and making a strange bronchial sucking sound.

When I say gnawing, I mean he had three of them in his mouth and when I say bronchial I mean Denis Hopper in the rape scene in Blue Velvet.

The smell was getting worse.

There was no window opening device in the back of the cab.

We hit road works on Bell St. and cabbie was in the wrong lane. It was closed for repairs. He peered through his enormously thick lenses into the car in the next lane. He was trying to see if the girl in the car would let him into the lane I think, but she took one look at whatever his look said to her and REACTED.

Then she looked at me.

I shrugged.

Which is hard to do when you've stopped breathing because of the smell in the cab.

She mouthed something at me.... don't know what it was.

Probably something along the lines of 'just shout if you need help'.

It was only a cab ride.

I've done worse things on a Monday.

Long pause while nothing happened because the guy working the stop-go sign was having a spliff break or something.

Cabbie did a u-ie in the middle of the road and we sped off down the other route.

We passed the church on North St.

The sign which I always read when I pass this church said 'I came to bring fire to the world and how I wish it were already kindled' (Luke 12:49).

Sometimes you pass that church and it says something really religious. And sometimes you pass it and it says what you've been thinking all day.

As we drove past I craned my neck to see if it was repeated on the other side of the sign, as I hadn't caught the verse number.

'Golf tournament, for details call 4** 2***'

Is that what happens when you run out of steam?

Eventually I got the drive down the NorthWest Arm but the smell meant the rush was not the rush I intended.

Through the Rotary. Which is a Cretan labryinth of red and black traffic bollards at the moment. Cabbie drove ve-ry slowly round due to the lack of eyesight.

Up the hill and he took his sweet time about getting me my change.

Finally I got out of the smell and got my evening back.

WHY ARE HALIFAX CABS SO EFFING SMELLY? IT'S EFFING EMBARRASSING.

So anyways, what happens when you run out of steam?

I am reading Alastair Campbell's diaries at the moment. I am obsessed with them. They are the most accurate description of working for a politician I have ever read and I have read them all.

A former colleague recently pointed out to me that the problem with where I work is that everyone there acts like they are five years old all the time. And I took that incredibly accurate observation on board and resolved to grow up and be twelve, at least.

On a good day anyway.

And after having done that for a month with all the self-control that that entailed, I start reading this book and realise that the architects of New Labour all acted like they were five.

All the time.

The whole book is peppered with Mandelson having a hissy fit about nobody listening to him. And Gordon Brown having a sulk because no one listens to him. And Robin Cook plotting against everyone because he is the smartest person in the universe and yet nobody listens to him. And Prescott trying to beat up people because they won't listen to him. And Clare Shortt fucking everything up for everyone on the Channel 4 news, because she is the conscience of the party and nobody listens to her.

And Harriet Harman and Mo Mowlam are just appalling. All the time.

And Cherie having a tantrum because Alastair sees more of Tony than she does.

And Alastair having a fit because Tony didn't care enough about his ulcerative colitis.

And Tony Blair in the middle of it all sitting on a bed in a chateau somewhere playing air guitar with his underpants on his head saying, for fuck's sake, we're trying to be the government here, can we all stop acting like we're five

Change a few names and we have every political party I have ever worked for.

It sounds like they had a lot of laughs at their own expense. Which is the same for every political party I have ever worked for. Which is why I still do it even though I feel like I have run out of ideas most of the time.

Himself just called and said one of the boilers is not working, so he has run out of steam for sure tonight.

I don't think I ever ran out of steam. I don't think that was what happened.

Honestly.

One day I had a life that involved dinners with ambassadors and weekends in draughty cottages in the west of Ireland with appallingly arrogant Guardian journalists and race meetings with dodgy millionaires and ladies' room chats about other people with drunk female politicians and parties in all the best places and knowing whose intellect was propped up with cocaine and whose was propped up by their wife and what Nobel Laureate to avoid because he was a fucking sexual deviant and which one was the party bore.

And the next day that life was over.

And I never missed that life.

Not for a minute.

Because apart from the fact that all experiences pall after a while, I had moved on and I had a life that involved being on my own and being in total control of what I did and I never had to watch my words or spend an eternity at some boring PR witch's theatre supper because some better guest had dropped out at the last minute and I got to hang out with the best kind of rock band - the professional touring band - which involved nights in the Camden Palace snooker hall and too many pints and then a walk in the Wicklow mountains in the rain with my favourite people in the world.

And then I had a moment of utter silence in the most expensive shoe box I had ever bought and realised that a life without the background noise of the real universe is not a life and decided that I should try to find that soundtrack and live in it.

And sometimes I miss that life.

But I remember every single second of it and when I get achey for it I just tell Himself stories about it and he appreciates hearing about the me that was me before the me that is me now.

And so do I.

And now I have a life that quite improbably and remarkably involves a seamless shift between the ridiculously pompous work of trying to figure out what is the best option for the society I live in and putting it out there safe in the knowledge that when I am wrong someone smarter than me will spot that and call me and tell me to cop the fuck on...

... and the times when I just sit in what's left of the wilderness from which that society was carved and listen to a trio of woodpeckers bore into a spruce bole.

And a whole bunch of creative, ridiculous five year olds to hang out with during the week.

And I don't have to feel guilty about how I spend my money, or my time, or my carbon, or my emotions.

It's not that I ran out of steam.

I just ran out of reasons not to live my life the way I am supposed to this time round.

So I suppose if you are living a life that you choose and it is the life you are meant to be living then you will never run out of steam.

Did you come to bring fire to the world, Luke?

Yes. Definitely.

Are you wishing it was already kindled?

If you are not then you are in the right place.

If you are then know that it is, somewhere and go find it.

And if you're not sure, then come to Bear Cove next August where we'll be kindling a fire.

Like the one in the photo. That's last year's fire I think.

Maybe some whales will come in to feed when the moon is overhead.

We might see a coyote on his nightly run.

We could even hear a shark take a seal.

I have to warn you though, it takes a long time for a seal to die from a shark bite.

And it's very bronchial.

In a Dennis Hopper kind of way.

I am officially older than young, but I still need my parents

I am no longer young. Although I am not sure exactly what you could call that, because as Shazz and I decided last night, we are not middle-aged yet, although we are heading there at a rate of knots.

We decided this while sitting digesting our lovely roast beef Easter dinner that I had cooked, while Himself washed up and the young people watched tv on Kitty's pink tv in her bedroom with the lovely new green and cream fern patterned comforter.

We were wondering at the strange turn of events that had led us in the course of one year to be ecstatically happy that we were just sitting in an apartment doing this instead of out dancing around a pool table in Bearly's Blues 'n' Ribs, which is what I think we were doing last year.

It's been a long weekend...

And then I read the Irish Times this morning and find that less than 5% of young people know the first commandment: Remember the Lord is thy God and thou shalt not have strange gods before Him. Which I know of course, as well as the other nine, in the right order, although I tend to get coveting and actual adultery mixed up. Because they're the same thing, aren't they?

So I am definitely not young anymore. But today, at least, for the first time in three months, I don't feel ancient.

Sometimes you have to break on the wheel to get off it.

Coming into this weekend, I was in pretty bad shape. The trip to Ireland had flattened me emotionally, which is why I've never actually written about it. Financially we were in a very precarious state, as we were facing into a job search for Himself and had to spend all the wriggle room money to buy a car to facilitate his being able to actually get to work in the city of crappy bus services.

Despite all that, I was fairly positive about the search: I knew he'd get something that would have a future for him in it; it was going to be all about how long we would have to stretch the budget.

Until next Thursday as it turns out.

So we knew when we got on the plane to leave Ireland, which was the hardest thing I think I've ever done, that it was going to be a tough couple of months. Then just to turn the wheel a couple of degrees tighter, just to be sure I got the point of whatever lesson Saturn is supposed to be teaching me about life, we came back to the coldest January and February this girl has experienced.

And a new member of the household.

Unrelenting mornings at the bus stop shivering in minus thirty windchill, scrambling to and from the bank, the post office, the Legislature, in howling winds that felt like they were peeling the clothes off you; and none of my clothes worked properly. And of course, I couldn't buy any new ones.

If you haven't done three months of minus temperatures and severe wind chills with absolutely NO body fat on you then you have NO idea what the hell I am talking about.

Add to that the two month job search. Which turned out great in the end, but which then involved waiting for the weather to improve so the job could start and then the usual Canadian bullshit about the payment cycle. Which is some chrissake insanity about always starting a job in the middle of a payment cycle and then having to wait weeks and weeks for your turn to be accepted onto the cycle and then it messing up and then finally getting a pay date when you're at your wits end and then that being a mistake etc, etc, blah di fuckin blah...

It happened to me too when I started working. The bastard Government still owes me two weeks wages. I will get it when I leave apparently. I won't get the effing interest I suppose.

This country suffers from the crappest administrative sector on the planet because they leech off the back of their unbelieveable resource wealth. They wouldn't last ten seconds in Ireland, most of them. There would be rioting in the streets if people kept back two weeks wages until you had left your job.

You betcha there would be.

Add to that finding a school, furnishing a bedroom, being a mother from scratch to a girl who thankfully is a very forgiving person, finding a new way to live all together with no outside because it's covered in snow and ice, and no trips to the movies or the mall or anything to ease the drudgery...

I didn't know what to do to fix all of this, so I did what I do when I don't know what else to do.

I worked.

And I cooked.

And I cleaned.

And I ordered people around relentlessly.

And I thought about where the hell my life was going. And how I had ended up in this place.

But I didn't say a word to anyone.

Which is where I made my big mistake of course.

I am a shit hot cook by the way. I can make a three course meal for three people that includes every bit of winter nourishment necessary for facing a day of minus thirty and driving hail out of a can of chick peas and three carrots and what's in my stores cupboard!!

I should be a quartermaster.

I can marshall the combined possessions of three people in a small apartment and render them invisible to the naked eye.

I can predict to the second when the bathroom supplies need to be replaced, and remember where I saw them on special offer, and remember to bring the coupon card with me and get the effing store to pay me to take the stuff off their hands.

I can manage the bills so that they get paid but we still get to eat that weekend.

I can do all of this on NO CREDIT.

And we still found the money for the pink television and the Japanese comforter.

Because I rock. And Himself rocks. And we are unstoppable when we are together.

The reason I could do all this is because about half-way through February I had decided to stop thinking about my life and get with the project. Seeing as I was the project manager.

In lieu of thinking, my brain started to get obsessed with my hair. A Canadian winter does nothing for your hair, and I hadn't been for a 'do' for a long while anyways, so my grey was starting to show. I had long, wiry, orangey, matted piles of the stuff that wouldn't do anything except squeak into a pony tail that made me look like the old English Royal that they had locked in the attic.

My brain started a little mantra in my head - want the hair done, want the hair done, want the hair done, want the hair done. Getting my hair done became a mythic milestone in my crappy life.

When I got my hair done, everything was going to be okay and the summer would be here, and Saturn would stop kicking us in the nads and we would sit outside in the sunshine with a beer and a steak and watch Kitty hang out with her new friends and Himself would caress my shiny, soft, brown hair (which he had stopped doing because his fingers were getting caught in the matts), and we would smile at each other in the knowledge that yet again the combined forces of the universe, despite their best efforts, were not able to tear apart what Himself and I have put together so carefully and lovingly.

Of course my brain, being my brain, had a second, lower mantra going about the new Shiseido eye cream Eileen had advised me to try. Which is still a pipe dream. All this because as well as having the hair of a shetland pony, I had dark circles under my eyes that were starting to evacuate south to my jawline.

From work.

Work....

On top of having a totally pointless winter session of the Legislature, we were renovating in work. So we had to move our offices around and live out of boxes for weeks on end and endure buzz saws and builders walking around yelling into their mobile phones and no kitchen and the smell of carpet glue and dust and general mayhem for six weeks.

Then everyone in the office got the stomach flu.

Except me of course.

And then we had to get ready for the Spring Budget session, which is a test designed to suck the will to live out of a person.

A month of ten or twelve hour days, stressed colleagues, stressed MLAs, a disinterested media (the worst possible audience for needy politicians), a population who are just trying to get the hell to the opening of the fishing and BBQ season in one piece, and no real issues to get to grips with. Just endless hours of droning by Ministers who seem to be capable of dislocating their shoulders patting themselves on the back for running this province into the ground.

And still the wind howled every day around Downtown Halifax, pulling what was left of my life force out of me, piece by piece.

I couldn't really focus on the vitally important issues of the day, being a little focused on getting us all through this winter, so it became increasingly difficult to put in a productive day. Then a money-making scheme I had concocted, whereby I would do extra work that needed to be done for extra cash, was refused by the powers that be. A simple decision; based on regulations I didn't know existed.

No discussion. Sorry about that.

They'll probably never understand how close I was to going postal that day.

Consequently, I lost the ability to sleep at precisely the same time Himself started work and had to set the alarm for five thirty am. We would go to bed early, fall asleep fine. Then I would wake up around three am, bathed in sweat, head screaming PANIC, PANIC, PANIC, PANIC, about whatever... carefully, carefully I would wriggle away from Himself's arm, do my yoga breathing and try to calm down, nearly be asleep and then my brain would JOLT me awake again. I would get to sleep around four thirty. Then the alarm would go at five thirty and that would be it until 6.55am, which of course is five minutes before I have to get up.

Isn't it always the way.

But it was okay, because Himself was doing brilliantly in work, first person to get taken on full time after all the training was done; liking the work, making new friends and generally getting on with things.

We had made handmade cards out of my photos and I was selling them in work and I was bringing in a few bucks every week, which was the fun fund. So we were starting to have some actual fun at the weekends. In a middle-aged, boring sit at home with a bottle of wine and a dvd kind of fun way.

And Kitty was doing great in school, scoring As all over the place and making new friends and earning more money than us in her job.

So I just kept moving along; one foot forward at a time. And pushed it all to the back of my head and lectured myself about all the women in the world who have bad months every month and how this was a good learning experience.

And the winter dragged on and bad things happened to people I care about and there was nothing I could do to help. And new babies came into the world, and I couldn't even send a card.

But that doesn't matter, because it doesn't make me love them any less.

And it was at the bit of the winter when you can just see spring around the corner, because you had a hike in the sunshine and you could hear the birds building their nests.

Then when Kitty got paid for the first time (after she had finally made it onto the pay cycle of course), she tried to give me some money for the bills. Because she knew I had had to pay my immigration fees (over a thousand dollars) that week and she felt bad because I was worried about money.

That was the moment when I realised I was going to need more than a hair do to fix the hole that self-enforced frugality had opened up inside of me. But I pushed that thought to the back of my head and said it was her money and she was to keep it for herself and do what she wanted with it.

Which is to buy a Razr phone of course, which I think is a stupid waste of money of course. Which is under negotiation at the moment.

I am nothing if not inconsistent in my parenting.

And then my mother texted me and said she'd put some money in my credit card account for Easter.

I was sat in the gorgeous Gabriel's stylist chair getting my grey covered and the bottom eight inches hacked off before you could type MUMS R THE BEST!

Easter was here and I had four days off and I was going to get lots of sleep and it was all going to be fine the week after because it would be the last week of the parliamentary session, and the pay cycles would kick in together FINALLY and we could buy the BBQ without having to sell a kidney to do it, and the sun would shine and the winter was nearly over and I was GOING TO MAKE IT (WITH MUM'S SPOT ON TIMING AS USUAL).

Saturn must have been laughing his moons off...

The weather forecast had been mumbling about snow for a few days, but I had been studiously ignoring it because in my world it doesn't snow at Easter, even though when we went to Costco to get the Easter roast I nearly fell over with the wind. And then on Friday, when I went to get my hair done the furies were HOWLING around downtown and rain was pelting itself against the windshield of the car.

That night I couldn't sleep. Spent the whole night awake worrying about my immigration status. Over which I have no control.

Next day, Kitty went to work and Himself suggested a drive up the Musqodobit Valley to scout canoe and camping locations for the summer and get some fresh air.

I think he thought that the drive would have a soporific effect on me. Like it does on a cranky baby.

We were going to take the scenic route home down the Eastern Shore, which is magical.

Halfway up the valley there was a break in the hills and we could see as far as Pictou County.

Well we could have if the BLIZZARD bearing down on us hadn't been in the way.

Turned the car round, drove like maniacs back to the city.

That night, a foot of snow dumped itself on Halifax.

And I fell apart. Finally.

Colombo called. To see how I was. The effort of not telling her set me off finally. I wept down the phone, silently. She just chattered on so I could pull myself together, but the genie was out of the bottle.

I wasn't going to cry. No sirreebob.

So I yelled at Kitty. Then I yelled at Himself. Then I realised what I was doing, so I stomped out into the snow and stood there yelling at the effing universe until I was blue with cold, then stomped home and lay in bed, trying not to cry.

Then my mother texted me to say that Smoothie's Version 2 had opened that night, and everyone was there, and it was great.

So I thought for a long moment and then decided that there are some things that you can't do by yourself so I sent out an SOS by text and she called and I wept and wept and wept and wept and wept and wept and wept down the phone at her.

She said, I wish I could give you a hug.

I wept a bit more.

She said, just imagine I'm giving you a hug.

I howled.

The way I should have the day I left Ireland and I thought my heart was going to break into a million pieces. Instead of wrapping a sheet of ice around it so I could keep going.

And eventually she made me stop crying and laugh instead and the Queen Dad got out of bed (it was two in the morning in Ireland) and grumbled about politics and ice hockey and made me feel like I was the most special girl in the world as he always does, and then I was able to make them put the phone down and go to bed. And I had a glass of wine and helped Himself celebrate the Maple Leafs squeaking into the playoffs.

And then I went to bed and slept like a baby and got up and lit the Easter candle because it is the symbol of a new beginning, and cleaned the house and cooked supper for Shazz and her boy who is in Kitty's class in school and we all ate until we were stuffed and then we watched Blood Diamond and thought about how pathetic our problems really are.

And now I'm still a bit sniffly and tired, but it's all going to be fine.

So what have I learned from all of this.

A family can live quite easily on a small amount of money, but it wears you out after a while. So those of us who are more fortunate should always bear that in mind when we think about the way other people spend their money. Sometimes something as useless and tawdry as a pink television can represent a lot more than plain old consumerism.

When you are in trouble financially, and you are trying to work your way out of it, be very careful whom you ask for an opportunity to do that. Being casually turned down is soul-destroying.

I already knew that people who purport to care about the working poor generally don't have a clue what they're talking about. Now I know it to be true on two continents.

If I hadn't had to do Lent as a child, I probably wouldn't have been able to do this. There was a reason other than religion why we had religious ritual. And we need something to replace it. An Observer Magazine frugality drive is not quite what I have in mind.

I live in a society where there is very little to do without money and a car.

I know who my Canadian friends are. I had figured I did, but now I know for sure.

Rabbit stew is very nice with fennel. But it is just as good without it.

My parents ROCK! (But I knew that anyways) If I can give Kitty half the life skills they have given me she will do fine.

She and I are going shopping today for a new pair of sneakers which she needs, and then we're going to look at phones which she wants. She has bowed to the inevitable, poor girl!!

At least her inevitable is not that she's no longer young.

Happy Easter!

Book reviews from winter reading

I am reading a lot at the moment, having rediscovered the joys of the library in an attempt to encourage Kitty to read. However, she seems to be getting books from school, so mine are going by the wayside.

Having said that, she doesn’t think much of the books from school. One would think being in a position to allows you to force a teenager to read, i.e. a teacher, you would give them something GOOD to read.

The library on the other hand, is full of great books and even better librarians who treat every teenager in there as if they are made of solid gold. Consequently, the young adult section is full of them reading and watching movies and working on the computer.

However this is Boooorrrrinnnggg…. Apparently.

How do you get a child to read? There’s the question for today…

Anyways, this girl, who didn’t want to do anything else but read when she was young, presents this lot for your review. Here’s the scoring system.

A+ = glad I read this book. You should read it. The world is a better place for the presence of this book.
A = interesting in terms of subject matter or style. Glad I read it for that reason, but not really adding to my understanding of my reason for existence.
Ho hum = self-explanatory
UNCSYWYLRTB = under no circumstances should you waste your life reading this book.

I’m going to put the score in before I review the book and then see if I remember it right by reviewing the book. If I’m wrong I’ll rescore it.

Animal Dreams
Barbara Kingsolver
A

Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home town to keep an eye on her father, who has early stage Alzheimer’s. She works as a biology teacher even though she is a doctor like him. Her altogether more together sister Hallie is in Nicaragua working with peasant farmers to increase their yield organically, despite the Contras attempts to stop her. As Codi falls in love with Navajo local, Loyd Peregrina and begins to enjoy teaching, can her rubbish self-esteem or other circumstances in her life and past hijack her new-found happiness?

As with all Kingsolver novels, the themes are environmental issues and filial responsibility. She writes novels about having to start being a grown up in your early thirties, about how crap it feels to have to fulfil family and societal duties, and each one of her novels put forward the premise that, at the end of the day, building a strong family and caring for the environment are the only worthy concerns.

Reading a Kingsolver novel when you are feeling crap about being a selfish thirty-something in the dark corners of your soul is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you don’t feel so goddamn alone and that takes the edge off the selfishness. Which is not such a good thing when you’re supposed to be trying to eliminate it. On the other hand, you get to the end of the novel and think, mweh… the alternative sounded pretty cool.

So why do I keep reading them? Well, firstly, they’re pretty goddamned popular. Lots of copies in the library, and I like to keep up with the Oprah book club types. Secondly, I like writers who write from their place in the world as much as I like those who concentrate on the art of writing or imagining. And unlike many female literary types (as opposed to chick lit), Kingsolver is a good writer who always throws in a couple of interesting side issues and teaches you a lot. This novel focuses on the Pueblo people of Arizona and New Mexico, their art and the amazing pueblo cities they built and still live in. Sounds like Arizona would be a good holiday trip someday.

Be Cool
Elmore Leonard
UNCSYWYLRTB

I do not get the point of Elmore Leonard. Also, I can’t read his novels now without thinking of John Travolta. And since Chili Palmer has a lot of sex in this novel, I found it quite off-putting.

In this novel, Chili Palmer (hero of movie Get Shorty) is thinking about doing the third instalment in his three movie deal, and like the previous two (Get Leo and Get Lost), writes the script by living it. Enter a former shylock colleague who gets topped while having lunch with Chili, some Russian mobsters, a potential Americana star from Odessa Texas, a totally corrupt music executive called Raji and his sidekick, the gay Samoan bodyguard, Eliot Wilhelm.

Much mayhem ensues, Chili dabbles in the music industry, despite nearly being thrown out a window by the Samoan he wins out in the end and the new movie goes into pre-production.

Boring drivel.

The Dead of Winter
Lisa Appignanesi
Can’t remember a thing about this book, but it is on my bookshelf so I must have read it.

The Globe and Mail said this was a cleverly conceived plot about the strange and terrifying power of love. Now that I read the back cover I remember: this is a crime novel set in Montreal and rural Quebec. Rural Quebec is this year’s planned road trip, so I think that’s probably why I bought it.

Madeleine Blais and Pierre Rousseau are childhood sweethearts from rural Quebec. Madeleine becomes a famous movie star and dumps lawyer Rousseau heartlessly. A couple of Christmases later, she turns up hanging in her grandmother’s barn. The police decide it’s suicide and close the case, but Pierre knows it’s murder because she had called him just beforehand. That must be how you know, then.

Pierre’s investigations in Montreal get the killer on his tail and the usual mayhem ensues before the plot is satisfactorily resolved.

Ho hum, although there are two satisfying twists to the tale that I only saw coming about half a mile off.

The Island Walkers
John Bemrose
A+ (but I’m not sure why).

This is a debut novel that got nominated for the Giller, Canada’s big literary prize, a year or two ago. Set in south-western Ontario, it charts the decline of an industrial town called Attawan through the eyes of a young man Joe Walker, whose father Alf gets involved with labour agitators who are trying to organise the town’s textile plant workers.

The labour agitator is an Irish guy called Doyle, which is a nod to the fact that many Canadian union activists and organisers of the fifties and sixties were in fact Irish immigrants. Pity they never get any credit for what they did at home in Ireland. Better keep that for the Democrats in the States, I suppose!

The town is bisected physically and class wise by a river, and it is on its edge that most of the action takes place, from the teenage couplings and rivalries described in the early part of the novel, to clandestine union activity. The mill is taken over by a Montreal company who bring in the usual productivity changes (ie redundancies), and try to root out any attempts to organise the workers by buying off their natural leader, Alf Walker, with a supervisory position.
Alf married above him (an Englishwoman he met during the war) and finds himself caught between his principles and her desire to move up a class in the town.

The portrait of Alf is very compelling, of Joe less so. I found myself seeing my father in Alf’s struggle, which is strange, as they are not alike really.

Alf’s desire to provide for his family leads him to an act which may or may not betray his comrades and lead to the death of a friend. The author switches viewpoint from Joe to Alf for this part of the novel, and Alf’s struggle with his guilt is the best third of the novel.

The first two thirds, which focus mostly on Joe’s perception of the town and his family and developing the movement of the story, are a little laboured. I never got into Joe’s skin, or developed much empathy for him. The whole plot could have done with a bit of a cull.

However, Alf and his co-workers and union buddies are very well drawn. They were all from the same ‘character group’ though, if you know what I mean. Bemrose needs to work on his range. If he can pull a group of diverse well-drawn characters together for his next novel, and go easier on the water imagery, then he’ll have a cracker on his hands.

I’m downgrading this to an A for Alf. Good starter novel though!!

The Secret River
Kate Grenville
A

Speaking of dads, mine gave me this over Christmas. Dads are generally very predictable, aren’t they? The Queen Dad usually gives me novels about a) Australia or Southern Africa, which are b) rural in setting, c) mostly historical or set in the recent past, rarely contemporary, and d) thematically, generally involve some discussion of how the principal European colonial powers messed up the rest of the planet for everyone who happened to be there first.

Sure enough, The Secret River is mostly set in colonial Australia, circa the turn of the nineteenth century, and involves transportation and other colonial outrages. This one has lots of boats, though, which gave it an additional kick of interest.

William Thornhill is a happily married waterman on the River Thames, who gets into a spot of bother due to the big freeze of 1806, steals some lumber, gets caught doing it and is sent to Australia.

Thornhill uses his waterlore to throw off the yoke of servitude, buying a sloop to bring supplies upriver to the early settlers. Eventually he makes enough money to buy his own land, which he settles with his family (who chose to be transported with him).

Trouble is, his land is sacred to the local Aboriginals.

Thornhill’s intuitive response is to try to manage the conflict and build a dialogue with the locals. Unfortunately, not all the settlers agree, and their views push him into an unfortunate choice when the conflict reaches a head.

The initial part, set in London, is an excellent description of the watermen of the Thames, not a subject of which I knew anything. And the descriptions of the Australian outback are so vivid that I felt I was there without ever having visited Australia.

Brilliant characterisation and unfolding of the eventual conflict between Aboriginals and settlers. With lots of sloops. Excellent read. Particularly if you like boats.

The Pick Up
Nadine Gordimer
A+

Because of the Queen Dad (see previous review), I have a deep interest in South African and Australian writing. Nadine Gordimer is my second favourite SA writer, after JM Coetzee who is the MASTER of contemporary, post-conflict literature (better even than our own Ronan Bennett) and who consequently should be read in detail by everyone on the planet.
Coetzee has a dark emptiness inside his stories that is so terrifying and bleak, I can’t figure how he controls it enough to write sentences, never mind complex, demanding novels. Sort of like Murakami, or Pamuk, but with a Western European sensibility.

Anyway, enough about Coetzee.

I got The Pickup in the library and have sent it back, so consequently I won’t be able to remember any of the characters names. I never can. But the book is about a rich South African white woman who falls in love with an illegal Muslim immigrant from an unnamed African country (Saharan though), and who accompanies him back to his village as his wife when he gets deported.

I thought about this book for a long time after I finished it. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you why I did without spoiling the ending.

Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers Spoilers

When they get back to the unnamed country, the SA woman has to live in the family home with him, in a village on the edge of the desert. She falls in love with the desert and the lifestyle, and begins to think how they could develop wealth in the town with her trust fund. Hubbie meanwhile puts the kaibosh on that, as he spends all his time trying to get a visa to somewhere else.

Finally, he gets a green card and celebrates a chance to make it in the States. Only thing, she’ll have to live with her ditsy mother in California while he drudges in Chicago, as he’s not going to expose her to the seaminess of being an immigrant to the States. She hates her mother, so on the day before they leave, she announces that she’s staying with his family. He is astounded and furious, but leaves without her.

The end.

The dichotomy between her need to escape the capitalist wealthy countries of which she’s a privileged member, and his fierce desire to get into any of them is one I had never thought of before. Gordimer highlights this beautifully in the context of an unlikely love story.

The Wildfire Season
Andrew Pyper
A

“Ross River is a town clinging to the outside world at the end of the Yukon’s loneliest road. It is also the hiding place of Miles McEwan, the town’s hard-drinking, fist-fighting fire chief. But the slow burn of Miles’ self-imposed exile is about to explode.”

That’s the blurb on the back. This book is great for three reasons:

1 – it deals with bush fires, and the people who start them. A large part of the novel deals with the crew that fight this fire and the investigation into how it started.

2 – one of the principal characters is a total mother-fucker of a she Grizzlie. I dreamt about her for nights afterwards.

3 – one of the other characters is a watcher – sits in a big tower for months on end, spotting fires. Currently that is my ambition in life.

A rip-roaring read, excuse the pun. People who know tell me it’s exactly what the Yukon is like. Next year’s road trip maybe. Pyper has two other novels, Lost Girls, and The Trade Mission, which got excellent reviews too.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marissa Pessl
UNCSYWYLRTB!!

“Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink” – Jonathan Franzen. Yeah, well you’d know all about foam, Jonathan!

Some nice person bought me this for Christmas, and I can’t remember who because I opened my presents when I was a bit drunk on Christmas Eve and forgot to write the name of the gifter on the novel, which is how I normally remember. So apologies if the gifter reads this. The book itself is a beautifully presented hard-backed edition so I will treasure it for that reason, but ...

... what a (huge) pile of annoying shite.

Dazzling debut my arse! This girl has been writing this novel since forever. Every book she ever read is in here somewhere, the whole enterprise feels like a series of book reports, book-ended by her diary entries about the teacher she had a crush on.

Plot in brief: Precocious grade 12er with handsome witty academic dad moves to new private school and meets astoundingly charismatic teacher who has select group of cool students round for supper every Sunday. Precocious girl tries to get in with the ‘in’ crowd. Weird, murder-related stuff happens, with completely OTT ending involving the Minute Men. Sound vaguely familiar in parts to anyone who has ever read the Secret History?

Ms Pessl says in the afterword (when did they become de riguer) that she thanks ‘my amazing husband Nic, my Clyde, who graciously watches his wife disappear alone into a dark room with her computer for ten or twelve hours at a time and asks no questions’.

I don’t think Nic is the one needs to be asking the questions love, if you don’t mind me saying. What is Nic doing while you’re in the dark room, eh?

And by the way, if you arrange your chapters as Core Curriculum (Required Reading), with such chapter titles as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Madame Bovary, would it be too much to ask that there be a CONNECTION between the chapter title and the content?

I present my case on this novel with a random excerpt:

“When I’d raised my hand in AP English to answer Ms Simpson’s question regarding Primary Themes in Invisible Man (Elison 1952) (which turned up on Summer reading lists with the regularity of corruption in Cameroon), incredibly, I wasn’t Quite fast enough; another kid, Radley Clifton, pudgy, with an eroded chin (BTW - That novel that E. Annie Proulx wrote about a guy, pudgy, with an eroded chin, i.e. The Shipping News, was very popular and often re-read by people, by the way, so you should probably think twice about ripping off lines from it again, Missy!), already had his fat hand in the air. While his answer wasn’t brilliant or inspired, it also wasn’t crude or Calibanesque, and it dawned on me, as Ms. Simpson handed out a nineteen page syllabus only covering Fall Term, perhaps St. Gallwey wouldn’t be such Child’s Play, such Easy Victory.

Sigh. Five hundred and four pages of this shite. With drawings.

You’ll be glad to hear that Radley beat her to valedictorian. Naturally, there were extenuating circumstances, of the kind you’d find in that US magazine that keeps track of UFO sightings and Elvis and such like.

UTTER SHITE.

Three Days to Spring - here's the first Fly of the year

This morning is typical Paddy's weekend weather.

Wet. Grey. Dull.

Enough said about the weather. Spring is coming in three days. The entire population of Canada is as stir crazy and sick of winter as I am, so the spring equinox is A BIG DEAL here.

Just to put the tin hat on the crappy sports day that was yesterday, Montreal beat Toronto to get into the playoffs and Toronto are out.

This is a big deal apparently. Himself is very upset. As is the boy wonder nephew Branden.

I'm talking about ice hockey by the way.

I watched a bit of the game (game, not match, doncha know) and as far as I could see Toronto were the best at beating the other team up, but apparently that doesn't count. Also, while Toronto were beating up the Canadiens, the umpires just stand around and watch. I asked Himself why they didn't stop the fighting and he said they wait until the players fall over before they intervene.

For guys on skates they can fight on their feet for a remarkably long time.

And apparently it's okay to ram another player at speed into the goal uprights.

I have no time for any game that involves body armour.

The Queen Parents called at some unearthly hour of the morning (for them, not me) to comfort me in my hour of woe and the Queen Dad informed me that Ireland had knocked Pakistan out of the Cricket World Cup and were into the last eight. So not to worry about the rugby outcome.

And then I saw Luke had put the same comment on my blog this morning.

This is what I love about Irish people.... they find comfort where they can get it.

Here's a thought... if by some miracle Ireland gets into the World Cup cricket semi-final will you all get time off work to go to the pub and watch the match?

I mean it would only be fair to support the cricket lads the same way as the football lads, wouldn't it?

And then Roddy Doyle could write a book about Fitzer and Paddy Mac and whoever paddling to the Carribean in a souped up Ford Transit van and how they got in with the reggae heads and had a few smokes and realised that not all foreigners were terrible.

Anyways, enough about the weather and the game, I got the first Fly of the year the other day.

I mean The Stinging Fly. It's a creative writing compendium from Ireland. Accent Monkey bought a subscription for me for Christmas. Nice pressie. You get told about it. You forget about it. Then one day you come home from work and there it is in the mail box.

The name comes from a Plato quote (about Socrates): God has especially appointed me to this city, so as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging fly...

Edited by Declan Meade, it contains essays, creative writing, poetry, reviews, photos and new lyrics. This issue has an excerpt from Eugene McCabe's new novel in progress, which is about nuns and which is a perfect short story in itself.

Good stuff generally. Particularly the poetry. However, I am at a loss to understand the three short stories in the review. I never did get the point of short stories if they weren't written by Alice Munro. I didn't really like any of these ones. Someone should tell me sometime what the current thinking on the short story is, as I am too lazy to research it myself.

And the two essays were not essays as I understand the form, although maybe the form has moved on and I have not realised.

However, as always in Ireland, the poetry more than makes up for any weakness in the prose writing end of things.

I'm trying to pick a favourite, but I can't, so here's one of the ones I liked, and I'm a big fan of Caroline Dowling's writing anyways, with apologies for printing it here if it's not a good vibe, etc.

The Cardigan

Her face flushed

When he gave it to her

unexpectedly on

Christmas night.

He'd picked darker colours,

brown and black

trimmed with a

cream crochet thread.

He said it suited her.

She said it felt tight.

Hemmed in her shoulders

strait-jacketed her arms

chest bursting when

fastened. Weeks of

wearing helped her grow

into it. Moulded to her

shape she felt every

knitted row - cable after

cable of blanket stitch,

garter stitch, back stitch,

stocking stitch, coiling into

patterns of Mondays and

Tuesdays, wash days and

Mass days. On Saturday

nights out she'd leave it

open, her underneath top

cheering on her red lipstick.

Sometimes after chips on

the way home he'd tell her

to button it. She could

do it with her eyes closed

It costs fifty euro to be a patron of The Stinging Fly. They don't have enough patrons. There's your birthday and Christmas presents sorted for a year or two.

Off you all go then.

Whereupon the reader hears about the quietness

It’s very quiet.

Nobody is sitting in the garden reading a book without joining in the conversation, despite travelling thousands of miles to see his daughter. Nobody is tidying up after supper, despite being told not to because she is on her holidays. Nobody has gone for a little walk down the road to look at the sea. Nobody is telling me a bit of gossip I missed about someone at home. Nobody is opening a bottle of wine, or enjoying a can of Monkey Beer, which is quite the nicest beer in the world apparently, so nice he insisted he had to pay for it. Nobody is talking about the nice meal, which was well cooked, and it was fine that it was fish again.

Nobody is intently watching Himself barbeque the steaks, looking back at us to see what we think. Nobody is sitting quietly, listening to me as I rant about work, keeping an eye out to see would Himself roll his eyes at her.

He was their ally. I kept catching him at it. Having a little joke with them at my expense.

And when I'd express my outrage at him he'd just give me a look that said, Get up the yard. You muppet.

It was strange at times. I felt like I was playing myself in my own movie.

But I was one of the minor characters.

Very unnerving, I can tell you.

Thank goodness I have a blog.

What would I do otherwise?

Nobody is sitting around the table after dinner, talking about the war. Or remembering stories from our families. Or bickering with each other over something the Queen Dad did, or Queenie, or the Queen Mum.

I’d get a different look when that happened.

Himself has a very complex body language. Which I’m starting to learn.

I wonder what mine is like?

Some time is spent thinking about this.

I’m probably just pretty verbal.

I just wrote my first stage direction!

Some time is spent thinking about this.

There’s no effing money in theatre.

Except… I was reading a review of a book (this is how slack I am) about John Osbourne, the angry young man, and it turns out that he made a fortune from the theatre.

I wonder how he did that?

Some time is spent thinking about this.

Nah, don’t know. Time to move on.

Time passes.

Beckett was rich too, of course.

Some time is spent thinking about the last two weeks.
And a bit of a weep is had.
A very bittersweet one.
And then a train went past. And a dog howled at it.

I kid you not.

And the train went by forever, like they know it does now.

I feel better now.

Even just remembering is making it less painful.

The quietness.

Then she heard the hiss of a car passing quietly down the road in front of the house.

Sorry reader, I couldn’t resist that.

Goodnight. Safe home.

All of you.

So many restaurants, so little time

Queenie is having terrible problems with her wifi at the moment, so posting may be delayed….

Effing internet. What effing use is it if you can’t get onto it.

Well, if you can do nothing else in Nova Scotia, you can eat well. Of course you can do lots of things here, but ohmygod you can eat well. Queenie has a taut swelled bump of a midriff after two weeks of the Queen Parents being here.

Last weekend, I brought them down the Valley. Down the Valley is the Annapolis Valley, which is the farming area of Nova Scotia. It was generally agreed that it was very like Ireland. Although it is mostly dyked reclaimed land so it is like Ireland if Ireland were Holland.

We stayed in a B&B in a little village called Canning, which has apple blossom everywhere, and a number of Baptist churches, and nothing else. The breakfasts were amazing. First of all, you got fresh juice, coffee and warm muffins served to your room at 7.30. Then you had an enormous breakfast at 8.30. Then we went in the car on a little jaunt somewhere. Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Beryl crashed onto the South Shore and across Nova Scotia that weekend. SO. IT. POURED. ALL. WEEKEND. Apart from one day, Saturday I think.

We did mostly tourist stuff – went to the Habitacion in Annapolis which is a reconstruction of the original French settlement of 1705. And the Acadian museum in Grand Pre which marks the Grand Derangement, the deportation of 10,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia by perfidious Albionists. And pottered around Wolfville, which is where I Wwoofed last summer and which is a nice university town a bit like a small version of Kilkenny. If Kilkenny had clapboard houses and was by the sea.

There was always a nice lunch in a European run bistro about two pm. Then back to the B&B for reading and afternoon tea, which usually involved some kind of very nice chocolate cake.

Then we picked a restaurant and headed off to eat more at 7.30, which is of course horrendously late in Nova Scotia. But still, there needed to be a bit of space in order to clear the stomach for a further filling.

Wolfville has many great restaurants, but the best three are The Tempest, Actons, and Between the Bushes, in that order I think. The Tempest is a chef-owner, very trendy European type bistro, all of whose servers are resting actors I think. Actons is a more high-brow, professional server type formal dining type place, with a focus on fish and steaks, and Between the Bushes is a lovely farmhouse restaurant in the middle of a blueberry farm with nice sunsets and all kinds of interesting fauna. Of course, Wolfville has the Blomidon Inn as well, which is supposed to be the best, but it’s a bit expensive for us.

Anyways, after that it was back to the B&B again for thankfully, rest not more food and a big long sleep until it was time to eat muffins again. Before that though Queenie had to reverse the car into the parking spot every night, which involved the Queen Father getting out and giving her complicated hand signals which she couldn’t see in the dark and then she would make a complete shite of the whole thing and get a lecture about parking. Which would go down like a lead banana of course.

Since we got back to Halifax we have been alternating eating in and eating out and sampling the delights of Haligonian cooking, which are multitudinal also. And as tonight was our last night together as a group of four, we went to Chives.

Chives of course starred in my blog nearly a year ago as the site of the wedding feast of Mr. and Mrs. Monkey. And very nice it was then and very nice it was tonight too. Although the table wasn’t decorated as prettily :->

So, just the one night left and the QPs will be winging their way back to Ireland. I wonder what impressions they will be bringing with them?

They met Himself and various politicians that Queenie works for and Hotspur the Goddess of Spin of course and some of Himself’s family, so that was all good. And Halifax seemed to grow on them once they figured out the buses and the waterfront and the grid system and that. Maybe not enough defined shopping areas for the Queen Mum to browse in.

And the Queen Dad and Queenie did the Harbour Hopper today, which is the Nova Scotian equivalent of the Viking Splash.

Today it was so hot it was almost too hot and our room is like an oven tonight so we will have to use the fan for the first time this year. August will be hot hot hot. Not as hot as BC, where temperatures of over 40 degrees are being recorded in Kelowna and Nanaimo and the forest fires are raging fiercely.

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.

Online Banking

Queenie's been doing her online banking from the comfort of her bed as it is cold and she was out late last night. Plus there's no work till January 3rd... hooray...

Queenie can sort out all her Canadian and Irish finances online just by pressing a few buttons, which is great. She was paying her Irish credit card bill, the paper version of which goes home to her mother. Usually she doesn't use this card, only for emergencies or in places where they don't take debit and she has no cash, so she checked to see what charges were on it, and there were four:

SEXY GIRL ADULT GIFTS HALIFAX NS
MICHELLE YORKE JEWELLE DARTMOUTH NS
CANADA POST HALIFAX NS
THE OLD TRIANGLE ALEHOUSE HALIFAX NS

The Queen Mum did remind me to pay the bill, but she never even mentioned the fact that I used a credit card in a pub, bless her.