Buoys and Ghost Trees on the Nova Scotia Shore

Nova Scotia threw off the ragged coat of winter last weekend and Himself and Queenie were lucky enough to be down on Long Island to see it.

Queenie skipped out of work on Friday afternoon at three thirty, having been hard at it since eight am, and we hit the road and headed into the sunset down the long steep slope to Cape Blomidon; then through the valley to Digby and down the Neck to the ferry. We had Himself’s nephew Branden with us, so we enjoyed ourselves making him squirm with embarrassment at us elders and our views on things and our goddamned embarrassing taste in music. Although I had my recently purchased Sleator-Kinney album so I could lord it over him a little.

We got the five thirty ferry and headed to his dad's house for a couple of beers before dinner. Then we watched some godawful movie that had Nicholas Cage wandering around Liberia pretending very unsuccessfully to be a big shot at smuggling guns.

Man, that guy can’t act his way out of a paper bag. His face is permanently stuck on ‘where the hell am I?’.

Queenie was tired after a hard week slogging over air emissions and sulphur dioxide limits and acid rain and all kinds of exciting environmental issues, so she was in bed asleep by one.

It was worth it though, because next day the sky was blue blue blue and we had breakfast early on the deck and planned a trip to the shore.

We walked up to the lighthouse in Tiverton and then cut down through the woods to the shore. The sun dappled through the birches and the spruces and shone on the winter grass, warming it up. It was a steep slope and difficult to manoeuvre, because the tree trunks were often rotten from the wind and sea salt; we had to take our chances with each grip. But we made it down with no problems except for the lower branches sweeping my hat off my head as I ducked under them.

The shore was exhilarating. The waves pounding the rocks, some snow drifted into dark crevasses, and the sun glaring down on us with a white, flat light that truncated the shadows. The sea was a lovely deep blue. We walked along the rocks to find the buoy that Himself had seen from the boat the other day.

A walk on the shore in Nova Scotia is a geologist’s dream. The rocks are a deep, dark brown, with seams of quartz and amethyst that run along like the joins in a patchwork quilt. The flatter rocks look like some giant’s children’s hopscotch game, crazily zig-zagging across the shore. In between the rocks, there are little pockets of purple amethyst and white that glisten beautifully in the sunlight.

We came across a birch tree that had had its bark completely stripped off by the wind and waves. It was a ghostly white, its skeletal remains stark against the sky and sea. The base was knotted and gnarled, the roots having been pulled up by the wind I suppose. It glistened like alabaster in the sun.

We found the buoy eventually. It was like an iceberg; two thirds of it is under water. It leaned against a big chunk of basalt, towering over it. There wasn’t a mark on it, despite being washed up on the strand for three weeks.

We weren’t the only ones there, although we were there first. The first gathering of this year! A chance to talk and laugh and enjoy the wind and sun in our faces. Queenie came home with sunburn and a big smile.

Himself had thought to bring a few Schooners in the knapsack, and I sat there nursing one while he wrestled a huge brass nut off the buoy bell as a keepsake for me.

Spring’s a comin’, boys and girls!

Golden Boy burned by electronic shadow

In exciting news that I just happened upon in the paper today Liberal golden boy and HisHighness' favourite (remember him boys and girls - Liberal 4 Life), Scott Brison, who has been humming and hawing and pretending to be thinking about running for the Liberal leader's job, got nicely shafted today when a dodgy email he sent before the last election mysteriously surfaced in the newspaper.

It had something to do with high finance, and insider trading, and a scandal that broke during the election but nothing was ever proved, and all that kind of nefarious stuff.

Of course, innocent until proven guilty etc.

I love the Liberals. They think nothing of eating their own for breakfast.

I wonder who leaked it? Belinda Stronach? Stephane Dion? Michael Ignatieff? They were all in town last weekend gladhanding the local Libs at their annual convention. The leadership battle is going on for months.

I should email HisHighness.

No, I should be nice.

Toffees, Telly and Terrorists

I keep finding weird differences between Canada and Ireland, and then forgetting to write about them. For example, the Werthers Original Toffee ads here are set in some random mittel-European country, that vaguely looks like Switzerland. And the toffee makers and the voiceover have a slight German tinge to them.

But Werthers Original are made in England!!!!

Should that be is, Ian?

The bus drivers are really polite here and always say 'good morning' in a really chirpy manner when you stagger on in the morning; and are happy to spend a few minutes waiting for an elderly person to get to their seat etc.

Today, I realised there was something else I was missing. There were a load of gruesome murders in this week. A thirty five year old guy got kicked to death for telling some skangers to shut up on the bus in Edmonton; a guy killed his wife and two kids in Toronto; a twelve year old girl here in Halifax was murdered by her godfather, who then killed himself. Her stepfather found them after beating in the door of the killer, who was a friend of the family.

The girl was buried today.

There was a curious lack of commentary on these events. Curious to a girl who has grown up with the Gay Byrne Show, the Gerry Ryan Show, Liveline, John Waters, Nuala O’Faolain and the entire gamut of Sunday newspaper opinion formers. Who would be frothing at the mouth with the reasons why this rash of deaths had happened.

I used to get annoyed by the cacophony of local, national and random opinions I was subjected to all day every day. Here it’s more peaceful and I get to form my own opinion about things.

Waaaahhhh!!!!

Tonight I've broken my no telly rule (well, I've broken it a bit lately because they're showing Series 5 of the West Wing every night at eight pm on CLT at the moment and that's the series I missed. But tonight I’m also watching the premiere of The Unit, which is the new uber-tv show that’s executively produced by a veritable host of uber-tv people, including David Mamet. And it has the added excitement of random episodes written by Mamet, so you have to check in every week to see if it’s one of his.

A bit like checking the dress rack in Frenchies for that Miu Miu number that sometimes pops up.

So far it’s a Mamet episode and it's very exciting. Afghanistan, laser-guided missiles, American Special Forces led by the guy who plays the President in 24. And then a sub-plot concerning the wives and families at home. Sort of Footballers’ Wives with guns. And people who say Ma’am and Sir all the time.

So far I’m not seeing a lot of Mametology; the 24 influence is showing a bit. Possibly worth a download if you do the technology. I’m trying to do the technology, but I can’t, even though Angela wrote me out line-by-line, moron-proof instructions on how to do it.

I should introduce her to the Irish people who have tried to help me do technology. And failed.

I miss the BBC. You could always just flick over to the BBC when the ads were on so you didn’t have to watch the ads. And then you often stayed because it was Newsnight or a cool documentary about something very English.

Here I have the CBC News at Ten, which is like the ITV News at Ten.

Utter shite. From Kandahar tonight.

It’s all about Afghanistan this week in Canada.

The Canadian forces recently moved south from their initial Afghan base, into Kandahar to take over from the Americans who have moved their troops to Iraq. So far three of them have been killed and another poor guy had an axe buried in his head during a village meeting the other day, by some tribal villager who was ‘upset about the searches of the women’. The soldier had put down his weapon and taken off his helmet as a symbol of trust. The Canadian army say he was in the Taliban. Was. The soldier’s friends shot him dead after the attack.

Canadians are in shock. They are freaking out because firstly, they’re not used to having a couple of body bags coming back a week, and secondly, because they’re worried that the rest of the world is going to think they’re a pack of warmongers. So far I have been saying that firstly, the rest of the world hasn’t clocked that this is happening, and secondly, it would take a lot more than three casualties and some return fire to make the rest of the world think that the Canadian army is like its big brother due south.

The calls for a parliamentary debate are just getting going and so far Harper seems to be playing it reasonably well. However, the Foreign Minister is from Nova Scotia, as are 20% of the current troop deployment, so he must be getting a bit worried, as this province is bearing the brunt of the deaths.

The army is saying they’ve committed to this mission and it’ll be a ten-year process to rebuild Afghanistan. I think it’s got all the makings of Canada’s Vietnam.

Let us rise

I am a typical, twenty first century lapsed Christian. I have no time for the mumbo-jumbo, unless it suits whatever loop of the psychological roller coaster I am on at a particular time.

The last time I prayed was July past, when I was panicking about finding a nice place to live. I was walking around Halifax in the sun, and nipped into the Catholic church on Spring Garden Rd. for a bit of shade. And to see what it was like - to add it to the list of temples, ghats, shrines, churches, chapels and cathedrals I’ve seen over the years, so to speak, even though it wasn’t terribly old or architecturally significant.

Then I saw the candles down near the altar. I dropped a loonie in the slot, lit one and all of a sudden found myself on my knees.

Kneeling

John Kinsella

It's a sultry afternoon and the inverted gothic
of the chapel draws all to its ecumenical centre,
as if prayer might help reduce your troubles,
or take you far away, or make you cooler -
air-conditioning for the soul - a guilty conscience
like an attack of Legionnaire's disease.
So the hazy reddish light is doubly altered
through the coloured glass and you tell yourself
nothing is to be trusted. And yet here you are -
tacky icon from the bedroom wall - kneeling
as if the air's so heavy you can barely hold it up,
as if the tricks of the light are too much,
as if you're being watched and won't look up.

Please, please, help me find somewhere to live. And let this job go well, and let me fall in love with Nova Scotia.

I don’t know if it worked for Kinsella, who was praying for a friend who was ill, but the very next day I found the house in which I now live. The job is still paying the rent and I am well past the infatuation stage with this province.

Of course, I got psycho Bruce as part of the deal.

Which could prove there’s a divine being that is half-scorpion.

Anyway, after eight months, this evening found me on my knees again, by the side of my bed this time. I have no idea why it happened. One minute I'm rooting through my chest of drawers looking for the bar of chocolate I know I have stashed in here somewhere, the next minute I turn, look at the bed, and suddenly I am leaning my elbows on it, eyes raised to heaven exactly as I was taught during childhood.

Hilarious.

Please, please, can you sort out this issue for this person, because it would just make my life better too. Thanks.

I have no doubt but that my wish will be met – it always is. I don’t think there is a divine being listening to me, although if there is then he/she/it rocks in terms of giving me pretty much what I ask for (with all the caveats about being careful what you wish for). But no, I don’t think there is, unfortunately.

Just as I don’t think that a partner can save you from yourself, unfortunately.

What I think happens is that at the moment when the search for resolution to some issue becomes too much to bear for me, I drop to my knees in a symbolic gesture of the load I am carrying and it gets lifted off me by the small act of that gesture.

And as I have found out again and again and again and still haven’t internalised; it is only when I stop trying too hard to sort out something that it miraculously sorts itself out.

I should spend more time on my knees, I suppose!!

I had a priest teach me religion once who told me that. If he thought I was finally agreeing with me, he’d fall off his chair. But he ran off with a woman and some parish funds a long time ago, so I doubt he cares anymore.

Anyways, whenever I do kneel down to ask for resolution, the first thing that always happens is that Larkin quote runs through my head:

The great only appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.

Sometimes it's nice to stay put for a bit though. And ask nicely if he/she/it could sort it all out to my satisfaction again.

And see what happens.

Just because a girl don't believe in God doesn't mean she don't believe in the divine.

April Wine with beer in March

We went to see April Wine last Friday.

April Wine is a stadium rock band from Nova Scotia that were big in the late seventies/ early eighties. Time has not treated them kindly, but they still play over 100 gigs a year.

They packed ‘em into The Marquee Club in Halifax this week at thirty dollars a ticket, so they must be making a tidy penny.

I got Himself tickets for his birthday, as he had spent most of the summer trying to get me to like them.

Driving along somewhere, I would take my eye off the cd player for ONE SECOND and suddenly, there would be surround sound KRAAAAANG, SQUEEEEAL, DOINNNNNG, LOOOOOOVVVVE, etc.

‘Turn that shite off now!’

‘It’s April Wine!’

‘I don’t care if it’s the effing Messiah, turn it off now or I’m walking to the shop/ the liquor store/ Kevin’s house/ Bear Cove/ Halifax, wherever. Usually Himself complied after a bit of grumbling. So when I saw they were playing in Halfiax just after his birthday and knowing he had never seen them, I bought the tickets in a fit of girlfriend-related good will.

Also, I reckoned he’d want to go with his mates.

But no. He wanted to go with me.

Great.

So we got smartened up and headed down to Ginger’s for a couple of pints to get me in the right frame of mind and then headed up to The Marquee Club which had a queue of forty-something year olds halfway down Gottingen.

We queued behind a gang of five laydeez out to relive their youth. I told them that the Marquee was very strict about ID. They all giggled hysterically. When we got up to the door, the bouncer, who was young enough to be my son and probably was one of theirs, was all for waving them in, but no, they insisted on hauling the drivers’ licences out to show him. He was mortified.

We got there at ten, which was far too early of course, not that Himself believed me, because I don’t know anything about going to gigs of course. Only having been to about six thousand more than he has in my lifetime.

Okay, I’ll drop the sarcasm dear…. I went, didn’t I!!

The support band came on at ten thirty. I can’t remember what they were called. They were about twenty. They were really nervous. They had a website address which they kept shouting out. Actually, I was staring out the bus window this morning and saw a poster for a gig they're having next week. They're called Fold of Policy, or something dreadful like that.

They started off well enough with a really loud, relentless guitars running away with themselves style opener that sounded like they had listened to The Clash a lot. I was very impressed. Maybe it was all the smoke in the room though. Then, sadly, their sound slowly disintegrated into a dreadful mixture of Pogues type rock and their version of that east coast Canadian loud guitar sound that drives me insane because it’s so old-fashioned.

Then they played a final song that was nearly as good as the first. So they have some potential. I think they probably need to get rid of their lead singer – he seemed to be responsible for the tripe in the middle.

We were sitting in the back bar through all of this, watching them on the big screen, so for a long while I thought the tambourine player they had brought on for the last song was banging it against his head. I was well impressed. Turns out my eyes were deceiving me as usual and he was holding his hand at head height.

When I grow up, I’m going to join a band and play tambourine and just bang it frenetically against my head for the duration of every gig.

I told Himself he should resurrect his band so I could do that. He took a long slow swig of his beer so he wouldn’t have to comment.

Then he sneaked a look down my top.

This is one of the reasons why I love Himself. It does this girl wonders in the self-esteem department to have someone take a long, slow swig of beer and sneak a look down her top.

Those of you who know me personally can take a stab at why this is the case.

Granted, he’s pretty tall for a boyfriend of mine, so maybe he has a different perspective on it than previous incumbents had.

Or maybe I’m filling out a bit with age.

Who knows. Who cares.

The fish are dancing to Daftpunk. They love Daftpunk. Every time I play Discovery they stand on their tails and sway to and fro all twined around each other. It’s really sweet.

Anyways, back to April Wine, who are definitely not Daftpunk.

They didn’t come on till almost eleven thirty, by which time the crowd was getting ratty, it being way past their bedtime for most of them, what with the career, and the kids, and the gym, and the commute, and the stress of it all.

Himself and I whiled away the time trying to spot the oldest person in the room (I did eventually, he was definitely pushing seventy), and spying on the strange Lebanese couple beside us. Late forties; he was wearing a cream wool polo neck and a leather coat, she was incredibly glammed up in a red dress and lashings of kohl and mascara. They sat sipping spirits, he lifted his chin onto his Sherlock Holmes pressed fingertips and stared at her unblinkingly while she squirmed around in her seat and leaned forward to whisper something to him every now and then. I was amusing myself by imagining their incredibly exotic back story when Himself had one of his ‘I know exactly what’s going on in your head’ moments and said ‘So, when are you going to write this book of yours’.

Ah, fuck.

Not you as well.

I was saved by the sound of guitars tuning up, so we went out and wriggled up to my favourite spot to the right of the sound desk and listened to the gig.

I suppose when you’ve been playing the same tunes night after night since 1979 you get pretty tight, and so they were. Very slick. Not a huge lot of ‘giving a shit’ coming from the stage though. The audience tried. There were a lot of Bud bottles being held in the air. And the crowd went wild for ‘Song of the Gypsy Queen’, from 1981’s Nature of the Beast, which was their mega-album I think (and which is available on iTunes for you rockers out there).

We waited about thirty minutes and sure enough, a big space opened up near the front as people started leaving for their washroom trips. So we went up for a closer look.

Covered in pancake the lead singer was. He looked like a metal version of Danny Kaye.

I lost the one strand of respect I had for him right there and then.

But we still had a good time.

And I got some brownie points. And so did Himself. So it’s all good.

The only sane lifeform in this house

This image was swiped from www.kateglanville.com. It's very pretty, isn't it.

Okay, I have been sitting on my bed staring at my fish long enough. It is time to do a bit of blogging.

I think Nabla and Himself are right; the fact that I turn the oxygen thingy off every night so I can sleep is giving them brain damage. Currently, they are picking stones from the floor of the tank and spitting them at the glass on the side facing me. I don’t know whether they are spitting them at each other’s reflection, or whether they are trying to get my attention.

I hope it is the former; if I feed them anymore, they will explode. And we’re not really getting anywhere on the communicating with each other front. Apart from ‘feed me, feed me, feed me’, wiggle wiggle O O O type gesticulation from them and head-butting my finger when I put it up against the glass.

At least once a night they wake me up by crashing loudly into something. I have no idea what they do, as it only ever happens when it is dark. But I am not imagining it, as the other night they woke Himself up too. ‘What ‘n the Christ…?’, he started up and then poked me in the side.

‘It’s just the fish, go back to sleep’, I mumbled.

‘What the friggin’ Christ are they up to?’ he wanted to know.

We turned the light on and they were suspended motionless mid-bowl staring out at us, all big-eyed innocence and ‘tum-ti-tum, is it time to get up and feed us already’.

It was four am.

That other great fishbowl of the world, the Oscars, is currently under the microscope of the world’s cameras, but I am not watching because that would entail sitting in the living room with Psycho Bruce. He has been watching tv since two thirty pm. It is now nine o’clock. He does this every Sunday. Last week he watched the box for thirteen hours straight.

If I did that I would throw up.

We staggered in from a night of revelry at two am Friday night and found him sitting staring at it in the dark, with his coat still on. He looked mesmerised. I think he was just really pissed.

Three more Sundays.

Then he will be gone. Maybe I can smuggle the fish tank into his bags and return the house to some form of sanity.

Some Walt to get us through...

As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud,
A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me.

I shall go forth,
I shall traverse The States awhile—but I cannot tell whither or how long;
Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease.

O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?... And yet it is enough, O soul!

O soul! we have positively appear’d—that is enough.

In Dublin's Fair City

Garda on Fire
Photo taken by a www.indymedia.ie contributer.

The combined forces of the Continuity IRA, a shower of local scumbags and some professional rioters reduced the main street of Dublin to this today, protesting against some unionists who had the temerity to think it was the right of Irish people, no matter what their politics, to hold a march in Ireland's capital city.

Ireland is completely tarnished; the DUP have been given a fabulous media victory, and the rest of us are embarrassed and sickened as usual.

And I don't care what your politics are. It is not alright to throw petrol bombs at police officers and set them on fire.

Jesus Christ!!

Sigh....

FBPII: In comparison to last February

This is the first month in the life of Percy’s Depressed that Queenie can look back a year and see what she was writing about twelve months ago. Not sure if it’s such a good idea, but it beats coming up with an original one.

Last February, there was a lot of ‘creative’ stuff about Percy’s origins and role in Queenie’s life, some discussion about the role and contents of her man-cupboard; articles about the film festival and going to the theatre; a long piece about Gerry Adams’ duplicity; grief-laden posts about Hunter S. Thompson and Arthur Miller dying, and many ranty posts about newspaper articles in the American newspapers with which Queenie had taken umbrage.

This February, the focus seems to be on the weather, politics, and reading - Queenie has been doing a lot of reading lately. And dvd-watching.

Which leads Queenie to the question: are things better this February than last?

One of her posts last year said “sorry about the delay in this post, but Queenie had a meeting over-run of seven hours today”, so that part of things is definitely MUCH better, as Queenie is out the door at 5pm any evening she wants to now.

Creative arts input-wise, it’s about the same. Except maybe a bit better.

Queenie is profoundly relieved that she has refound the ability to read for hours and hours without losing her concentration. Something to do with the absence of seven hour over-runs she suspects.

Last night, she finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer, who apparently is really talented and successful and has won all kind of writing awards without appearing on her radar before now. He has a ‘stunning debut novel’ call Everything is Illuminated that Queenie should probably track down in order to compare with David Eggers’ debut.

Queenie suspects it will be very similar.

The book appeared on her desk in the office one day last week as a reward for her lending Shalimar the Clown to a colleague.

It’s about a boy with some condition along the autism spectrum dealing with the death of his father on 9/11. He does this by embarking on a Quest to find the owner of a key to a safety deposit box which he finds in his dad’s dressing room. All he knows is that it might belong to someone named Black. So he decides to track down every Black in New York City.

There's a sub-plot concerning his grandparents who survived the bombing of Dresden.

Technically, it’s very clever. Lots of interesting tricks that pit themselves against the futility of modern existence in a global world rife with random acts of terrorism. Unfortunately, there's nothing that wasn't pioneered recently on the West Coast by Eggers and his crew.

Safran Foer doesn't chart any new territory in the autistic spectrum point of view either, in fact it's too like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night for my liking. My liking being that new books that purport to be daringly innovative should be.

But it was the bombing of Dresden bit that really really annoyed me. It's an obvious homage to Vonnegut. But unlike Vonnegut, the fundamental message of this book is 'life is shit when global events result in the people you care about dying - I wish it could have not happened', whereas Vonnegut said 'war is crap, we should stop declaring it on each other'.

And at the age of eighty three Vonnegut is still wryly declaiming this irrefutable fact and railing against extremism in his own and other societies. I was lucky enough to hear an interview with him a few weeks ago, where he announced several times that he was going to be dead soon, so he could say what he liked (as if he ever did otherwise), and such was his humanity, his humour and his overall optimism despite himself that I felt that I was experiencing one of the better moments of my life.

Vonnegut I will mourn when he goes.

So, back to Safran Foer, not blaming him personally, but it seems that being talented and daring and clever in New York last year was all about combining the most garish and commercially successful bits of Eggers, Haddon and Vonnegut.

Queenie is very cynical about East Coast literature these days.

We could talk about the theatre and film this February if we wanted.

She went to see The Vagina Monologues recently.

The problem with TVM is that people tend to do it to raise money for women’s charities, which means that the people undertaking the monologues can’t act their way out of a paper bag, but you still have to pay full whack for a ticket and applaud thunderously.

Queenie was really bored and cold, because the Canadian equivalent of the parish hall is just as draughty and dusty, and that’s all she’ll say about TVM. Apart from declaring that she never wants to hear the phrase ‘my vagina’ enunciated in a Canadian accent ever again.

Queenie has seen a lotta lotta movies recently, all pretty good. There’s a bumper crop of cinema being harvested at the moment. One of the benefits of an insane Republican regime in America I suppose.

Recent great movies she’s seen – Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, Grizzly Man, Brokeback Mountain, The Constant Gardner (is it true you can’t get a table in Chapter One now because Ralphie is eating there every evening?), Broken Flowers, and I heart Huckabees.

Mediocre films she’s seen include North Country and Junebug. Although the acting in both was very good.

This weekend Queenie’s all about lounging around the house watching movies, so she’s rented the Coen Brothers’ The Man who Wasn’t There, which she hasn’t seen, In the Bedroom, which she missed last year, and Millions, a film by Danny Boyle which she only found out about yesterday, but which sounds good.

So the initial conclusion seems to be, slightly better on the work and creative inputs front; maybe too much focus on the weather, and the ranty focus moving from the ‘through the glass darkly’ medium to the actuality due to her increased political involvement.

Queenie should probably decide whether that’s a good thing or not.

February Bleughs: Pairt a hAon

Queenie couldn’t sleep last night, what with the excitement of a new cabinet that includes a Minister for Natural Resources that has his own ATV collection to go with his crocodile skin cuban-heeled boots and all.

She lay awake listening to PsychoBruce cracking beer cans (seven on the windowsill this morning) and thinking of all kinds of erudite and witty things to blog about in the morning. Of course, she should have switched the light on and made a note of them in her little moleskin, because she’s damned if she can remember any of them at the moment.

They’ll come back to her.

It snowed last night. That’s the thing about snow. It’s totally silent. You haven’t a clue that your world has changed until you open the curtains the next day and the world is softly, moistly blanketed in white again.

I do hope that there won’t be much more of it. It’s not that I mind snow – I don’t. It falls; it gets shovelled to one side; it melts. It’s the downward spiral in the temperature, followed by the slow upward haul to bearable, as well as a day lost to leaden skies with no sunshine to break the wind chill that I mind.

I am bored with the Atlantic Canadian winter. Despite the fact that it is in the ha’penny place when compared to Central Europe, or Minnesota, or even Saskatchewan. I have been asking around about potential dates upon which to expect daffodils, etc, the accoutrements of spring.

Typically, my Atlantic Canadian acquaintances haven’t a clue. So they think of the worst possible spring they ever had (whether real or imagined) and then assure me that that is the norm. Those of you who follow this blog will remember that the same crap went on about the winter (and they were all wrong).

I was starting to get upset about it, but then I realised it says more about them than it does me, so I have decided to be magnanimous.

Poor Maritimers – they get the award for least glamorous manifestation of just about everything – weather (none or crappy), work (none or crappy), politics (see Cabinet photo above), scenery (mostly flat), high society (none), bear attacks (none), you name it. So they make up for it by LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH ABOUT HOW BAD THE WEATHER IS.

Apparently, the daffodils won’t appear till mid-May.

If that is the case, then they must have all died off the day before I arrived last year, as daffodils generally last about six weeks and I arrived at the end of June.

Sigh.

In my final moan about Nova Scotian winters, I like my weather to have a soundtrack. There was a gale here last weekend. I lay in bed and the wind howled around the house and it rained a bit. I was ecstatic. It was like a normal windy Friday night at home. But that’s only been the second time I’ve experienced it here in Atlantic Canada.

Maybe I should move to Nunavet.

Apparently, you can make $60,000 a year doing data entry in Nunavet.

Francis, my co-ordinator in the library TESL to immigrants programme, says I have the February bleughs.

Sounds about right.

Find your slot

Isn't it nice to have these all simply defined at last??

And to see that Baby boomers and Gen Xers don't binge drink and say whatever all the time.

Baby-boomers: broadly speaking, includes those born between 1946 and 1962.

Generation X: This grouping includes those born between 1962 and 1981. The X in the title refers to the namelessness of a generation who felt overshadowed by baby-boomers. With their teenage years spent in the patently ridiculous 1980s, it's no surprise that this generation specialise in irony and sarcasm. Many grew up under the Reagan/Thatcher axis, and were marked by events such as the fall of communism and apartheid and, later, the rise of the internet. They dismissively refer to baby-boomers as "hippies", while boomers prefer to pretend that Gen Xers simply don't exist.

Generation Y: The newest cultural generation, Generation Y, refers to those born between 1981 and 2000. They intensely dislike the name Generation Y, as they feel it's too linked to Generation X. It's a bit early to collate any meaningful material on them; however, the baby-boomers think all they do is binge-drink and say "whatever" all the time.

© The Irish Times

Bruce Chatwin by Nicholas Shakespeare

I finally finished Bruce Chatwin’s biography today. Published in 1999, written by Nicholas Shakespeare, it’s a mighty 600 plus page tome that examines every aspect of Chatwin's many-faceted, and carefully pigeon-holed life - the art, the travel, the bi-sexuality, the collecting, the obsession with nomads, the views on anthropology, the obsession with famous people, the inability to shut up - and takes a long, cool look at the damage he inflicted on many people he came across, not least the people who loved him best.

His mother, Margheurita, said she wanted to die before it came out. Which she did.

However, this is not to say he wasn't loved. It is, on the whole, a very positive portrait of a very complex person. His American wife of twenty three years, Elizabeth, was instrumental in ensuring it was undertaken.

Yes, his wife of twenty three years.

I thought I knew a lot about Chatwin. I knew he went to Marlborough. I knew he had had many many affairs with other men, and that he had broken the young Jasper Conran’s heart. I knew about Sotheby's, and his leaving a glittering career there to study archaeology in Edinburgh, and his travels all over Africa, South America, Asia and other places. I knew that his early writing was mired in how difficult he found it to write a book about nomads, and that after many other books, The Nomad Alternative eventually became The Songlines. I knew he died of AIDS back when it was still whispered about.

But I never knew he was married.

And so young.

After the first couple of years where she supported him in university, he mostly lived away from Elizabeth, whom he had settled into a country living style existence in rural England. She seemed to have had a stoic outlook on the marriage. She put up with all his behaviours; sorted out his finances, kept his possessions and tended to the boring mundane parts of his life, while he pretended to be a nomad, or a monkish writer living without possessions in London, or a international jetsetter.

When he became famous he treated her even worse than before, being rude to her which he hadn't before, not hiding his liaisons, interrupting the rhythms of her life on her own, and she eventually had enough, booted him out of their English home and sold it.

When he got sick a couple of years later in the early eighties, he very handily fell back in love with her and she nursed him lovingly to the end of his life, the last bit of which was spent, ironically, in Shirley Conran's house in the south of France.

I dunno, maybe that’s what Elizabeth wanted to believe. Maybe that’s what Nicholas Shakespeare believed. Maybe they concocted it together.

He sounded like a horrendous little shit to me. Spoiled, pretentious, selfish, egotistical. All the attributes we associate with greatness nowadays, without any question as to whether they should be acceptable in anyone, even great people.

I’d have hated him.

Thank goodness I never met him, so I can admire his writing for what it is.

In an interesting aside, the book also confirms what a number of other books have hinted/ tried to get across: Paul Theroux is an obnoxious git. Salman Rushdie seems nice, although there's a bit of kerfuffle when he splits up with a woman Bruce introduced him to in Australia.

There's a great anecdote in the book about Chatwin's funeral, held in a Greek Orthodox church on the day Rushdie's fatwah was announced. Theroux leans over to Rushdie half way through the ceremony and says I suppose we'll all be back here next week for you.

Maybe we’re all too nice to be great writers?!

Or too scared to be obnoxious enough to be great.

Another totally impractical game from Galaxy via Myles' blog

Myles' blog is always full of interesting games. I notice he has a Johari Window up. Brave lad. I notice quite a few of his friends picked the same words to describe him. I notice he has a Nohari Window up as well (lists of negative descriptors). Queenie tried to pick a few, but they were all too harsh.

Lorraine -- [noun]: A person who enjoys the smell of rotten eggs 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Roast beef dinners are the mark of a man

It’s official. I have the flu. Well, my doctor in Ireland (ie my uncle who’s a doctor) says it sounds like I have the flu. That’s enough for me. I feel like I do. Coughing, shivering, shaking, aching, throwing up, sleeplessness followed by hallucinatory dreams, sweats, wobbly legs, dizzy spells when I stand up, nausea when I lie down, and absolutely no desire to smoke cigarettes, drink coffee or alcohol, or to eat chocolate, biscuits or any kind of nice food whatsoever. Despite being presented with all kinds of nice things over the weekend.

Definitely the flu.

The first flu I’ve gotten in years and years and years. The last one I remember was in 1991, although I could be wrong. Normally I get a chest infection due to smoking too many cigarettes and get sick for a few days and take antibiotics and feel fine again.

This is different. This is scary.

Of course, there is no connection between me having this flu and this being the first winter I have gotten a flu jab.

Vaccination works, oh yes sirree bob. I’ll be first in the queue for the avian flu jab when they finally figure it out.

On Thursday night, Himself called to see what the plan was for the weekend. I was in bed, miserable, having just travelled all the way down from Cape Breton in the back of an SUV with the onset of the flu. Although I didn’t know what it was. I desperately wanted Himself to come up for the weekend, but figured he’d be bored and pissed off with me being so ill, so instead of politely explaining the situation to him in order for him to make up his mind about it, I was really rude to him and told him I never wanted to see him again.

In a much ruder way than that.

Next morning I rang work to say I wouldn’t be in, and sounded so much like a castrated bullfrog that the colleague who answered the phone laughed. In a not unsympathetic way, of course. But still, laughed.

I sat up in bed and answered my work email and did a bit of work and didn’t get that ‘11.30am feeling much better’ feeling I usually get when I take a day off work. In fact, I was feeling decidedly ropey. Miserable.

I called Himself, who had sent me a nice text that morning. To which I had responded with a nasty one of course. So I was a bit nervous calling him; the brazen cheek of admitting I needed him and all that…

He said: “I would like to come up and look after you for the weekend. I am going to buy roast beef and potatoes and carrots and peas and cook them for you so you can have a proper Sunday dinner. I want to nurse you back to health because you sound miserable.

I said okay.

Himself said: What do you need from the supermarket? What do you need from the drugstore?”

I said I’d make a list of stuff I needed. Himself said he’d be up in a few hours.

I hung up and wept tears of relief into my pillow.

I know that there are women all over the world who could read this and scoff. Those women have always had male partners who are kind and generous and caring. Those women consider this type of treatment as natural as breathing. Or commitment. Those women wouldn’t countenance anything else.

Many of those women are my friends. Many of the men involved are my friends. I have always been a little jealous when I witness the caring side to the men I am friends with.

But I have always thought that maybe it was something in me that chose men who dealt with me being ill as an irritating, but unavoidable intrusion into their busy schedules; as opposed to welcoming it as an opportunity to take care of me. And always told myself that it had benefits, in that it was the natural outcome of them being happy for me to be hugely independent.

Of course, Himself is happy for me to be hugely independent, and has even accepted that I pay for things some of the time, which is not very Canadian male at all. However, he doesn’t appear to feel that my huge independence should prevent him from taking care of me when I’m a pathetic, shivering, coughing, puking mess.

Despite my best efforts.

Christ on a bicycle giving Mary a crossbar, as my brother would say, I really have had shit taste in men until very recently, haven’t I boys and girls.

I’m sure I’ve insulted a load of people now, but I don’t care.

Anyway Himself arrived up with a slab of roast beef that would feed the extended family on both sides, enough cans of Campbell soup to line the Warhol Room in the Museum of Modern Art, and a bag of Crème Eggs.

And Canadian Lemsip, which is called Citron. Which tastes worse than Lemsip.

And an enormous bag of grapes.

Which sums Himself’s attitude towards caring for me up pretty well – something new he’s thought of that I might like (roast beef dinner that will remind me of home while I’m sick); something sensible that he’s figured out I need (Campbell’s soup), something he knows I really like (Crème Eggs), and something we both like (enormous bag of grapes).
Bless him.

I tossed and turned and moaned and dreamed and coughed all night last night. He claims he slept through most of it, but I know he was awake.

I looked a right state this morning. Finally managed to summon the energy to wash my hair and then put my head down to blast the roots quickly, and sort of fell asleep while I was doing it, so now I look like the wicked witch of the west, with demonic, flyaway, big hair.

But he still thinks I’m gorgeous.

Bless him.

Nova Scotia roast beef is nowhere near as good as Springtown roast beef. But that’s to do with how they feed the cattle over here, I think. But still, it was fine. The rest of the dinner was lovely and it reminded me of home, so then I called the house, and talked to the Queen Mum and Dad and heard all the news about who was dead, and who was sick, and who was seeing who, and who was expecting, and who was winning in the bridge club, and what flowers were up in the garden, and what nefarious constituency wranglings Bertie was up to, and what nefarious bird-murdering wranglings Jabba the Cat was up to, and all that kind of stuff, so that was great.

And he did the washing up while I yacked on.

Bless him.

Reserving my views on education systems

On my second night in Cape Breton we went to the Membertou Reserve Convention Centre for dinner. The Centre belongs to the Membertou First Nation.

From their website - Named after Grand Chief Membertou (1510-1611) the Membertou First Nation belongs to the greater tribal group of the Mi’kmaw Nation.

Membertou is situated in the city of Sydney, Nova Scotia, within its tribal district of Unamaki (Cape Breton). It is one of five Mi’kmaw (pronounced mi’gmaw) communities in Cape Breton, and one of thirteen in the Province of Nova Scotia.

It’s a really beautiful venue. A beautiful theatre and a gorgeous restaurant with a view of Sydney and beyond, the harbour. And of course the complex has a casino too. (There’s a long and convoluted history regarding the placement of casinos on Mi’kmaw Reserves and lots of fors and againsts which I am not going to get into now, not least because I haven’t figured out my own position on it). We had a pleasant few hours there, with dinner and then a meet and greet with local party members, but a few things struck me that night.

Why do reserves look the same?

As we drove into the reserve, one of the other women in the car and I looked up and at the same moment said ‘is this the reserve?’

You just know when you’re in a reserve. Because they all look the same. No matter where you are. Ontario. Manitoba. Alberta. Nova Scotia. A reserve looks like a reserve. Before you Irish readers get all misty eyed and think it's a hearkening back to the old day, a reserve is like a sub-division (suburb). Except there's something I can't put my finger on, that makes you know it is a First Nation Reserve. I was amazed that Canadians feel the same way too - I thought it was just me.

Don't get me wrong - it’s not like in Ireland, where all traveller halting sites look the same because they are all equally awful: grim concrete service areas, rubbish everywhere, scrap metal piled high, newly washed clothes hanging from bushes to dry, top of the range Land Rovers parked willy nilly, mixed with Hiace vans and other vehicles.

First Nation Reserves are not at all comparable to Irish traveller halting sites. They are made up of streets with houses that have decks, and barbeques, and cars parked outside, and children’s toys scattered on the lot – just like all Canadian streets. But they all look slightly different to other suburbs. And they (reserves) all look the same.

Very weird.

Nova Scotian education system

At the meet and greet I met a guy in the education field for whom we had been dealing with an issue, and I asked him whether it was sorted out and of course it was and he hadn't bothered to let me know.

One of the things that really pisses me off about working in politics is when people you help get sorted out and don’t bother to tell you. Why is that? Do they think you don’t care? I always remember how excited the constituency assistants in my old Irish party used to be the odd time they’d get a thank you note from a constituent they’d helped house or whatever.

Never mind.

We had a long conversation about the cost of university education in Canada, and in Nova Scotia in particular. Because it is more expensive in Nova Scotia. of course. There are eleven universities in Nova Scotia, several of which have an excellent reputation and score very high in the annual MacLeans university report card, so they have a net influx of students from other provinces. However, this means that the universities are severely underfunded, because the federal transfers for third level education go to the province in which the student grows up/ is domiciled, not the province in which they are studying.

Talk about a STOOPID policy.

So now, Nova Scotian students are starting to go to Newfoundland to uni, because a) it’s much cheaper, and b) it’s Party Central apparently.

A Nova Scotian will borrow up to $30 – 40,000 to go to university. And then have to pay it back when they start earning. Wages are crap in Nova Scotia, so they all go to Ontario or Alberta to work, so they can earn enough money to pay back their loan.

Talk about a STOOPID policy.

I’m actually going to stop talking about it now, because it makes me so annoyed. And that will make me start uttering heresies about healthcare and who should pay for it versus education and who should pay for it and then I’ll get thrown out of my political home in Canada.

Queenie will just say this: Canadians spend 40% of their budget on free public healthcare from the cradle to the grave, and 21% on education, which is so badly underfunded that students have to pay fees of up to $6,000 a term.

Irish people pay 30% of their budget on health, which is not free for everyone, and 22% on education, which is free up to degree level. Of course, most Irish people also have to pay huge private health insurance fees to enable hospital care, and get gouged by the health system who overcharge the health insurance companies, so it is probably closer to 40%. But that’s a whole other day’s question.

Today’s question is: what’s going on in Canadian education that free education up to degree level is not possible? I smell gouging going on somewhere, I do.

Fugitive Pieces

Fugitive Pieces, the Anne Michaels novel I bought last week, is fantastic.

No really, I am going to rave about this book for months. And months. And months.

I was spellbound.

Michaels is a poet and composer mostly, and it shows in her work. Her language is unbearably lyrical. Her themes include music and language and cadence and pace. Her themes are exposed through music and language and cadence and pace of course too.

Unfortunately this is her only novel; but it's published by Bloomsbury and by Knopff, so people who are not in Canada can get it. The novel is about remembering. And about being able to fall in love alongside the heavy burden of remembering.

Set in Toronto and Zykynthos and drawing on themes from geology, the first part of the book is a description of the lifetime of remembering undertaken by Jakob, a young Polish Jew who is rescued and brought to Greece by Athos, a geologist. The second part of the book is the story of Ben, the adult child of Holocaust survivors who lives in Toronto and who meets Jakob. The elder man's poetry helps Ben to recover from/ recover the memories of his parents and the impact of their experience on their new lives in Canada and on him.

Here's an excerpt from one of her poems, Memoriam, which I have reprinted from her website

I have nothing to give you, nothing to carry,
some words to make me less afraid, to say
you gave me this.
Memory insists with its sea voice,
muttering from its bone cave.
Memory wraps us
like the shell wraps the sea.
Nothing to carry,
some stones to fill our pockets,
to give weight to what we have.

Takin' Tom to Cape Breton

Cape Breton tomorrow.

Finally.

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

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

A mobile incinerator?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cape Breton tomorrow but.

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

This is no country for old men

Nova Scotia's ruling Tories elected a new leader tonight; Rodney McDonald.

The Hot-Rod's a former famous fiddler from Cape Breton.

He's thirty four.

Which is younger than Queenie.

He's the Minister for Tourism. And Culture and Heritage. And Health Promotion. And Immigration. All the important stuff. He has a couple of claims to fame. He abolished the Arts Council. Except for the fiddler section, based in Cape Breton. And he oversaw the collapse of the tourism figures last summer when the yankees stayed home.

He was elected today in the second ballot of a staged event in Halifax that was closer to Canadian Idol than it was to any political happenstance I've ever seen. Or maybe the Eurovision, seeing as it was in English and something that sounded like a frog being strangled, but which I think was supposed to be Francais.

In true Eurovision style, there were two hosts; some bloke whose name I can't remember, and Dame Judy Streatch, the 'thrusting new young woman in NS politics' (her daddy is a politico of course, so she's 'new' in the good ole boys' sense of the word). She shook my hand once in the pub, and nearly broke my middle finger bone by squishing it between my index finger and the ring on my third finger. There were light thingys and big screens and all the doodahs that come with 'events' nowadays.

It being the weekend and it not being fair on Himself who had travelled up to see me, I didn't tune in until the second ballot was nearly over.

They were just about to announce the winner. Judy was doing her best Paula Abdul impression, despite the fact that her demeanour and jawline veers closer to a young Margaret Thatcher, and the assembled thousands shouted 'Rawd-nee, Rawd-nee, Rawd-nee' on cue as she gorged on the glory of the spotlight and turned the election of the new premier of this 'noble province' into a dreadful parody of Republican American razzmatazz.

Then they played fiddle music as Rodney made his way to claim his throne, and I thought I was trapped in the Eurovision that we hosted that spawned Riverdance.

God help Nova Scotia.

How it helps us is another day's work, but the pundits were full of Rodney's need to have an election straight off, to put his mark on the party and to get the electorate's permission to rule etc. etc.

So I suppose that's good.

There will be a by-election in my home constituency soon anyways.

Sigh.

I tell myself I came to Canada for a year off and I laugh hysterically.

Oilean na Leaba

Of course, my last post was supposed to tell you all about my weekend down on Long Island. But I am so mithered at the moment I forgot.

My boss was back in work today after a couple of weeks off and he couldn’t remember anything. He kept walking into my office and then looking blankly at me.

Welcome to my world (this week), dude.

Queenie doesn’t know what’s wrong with her at the moment. If she’s not asleep, she’s dreaming about sleep, or lying in bed getting ready for sleep, or lying in bed trying to get up and go to work.

It must be the weather. And the fact that people in work are getting ready for an election again. Of course, Queenie has been getting ready for an election since last August. So maybe this time it will happen and then we can all calm the fuck down for a bit.

Of course, when Queenie was in Ireland, she was like this (sleepy) all the time, so she’s not too concerned about it happening for a couple of weeks. But it didn’t make for an insane weekend on the island.

Queenie was in bed asleep by eight pm on Saturday night and did not go clubbing in Digby like she was supposed to. Which is probably just as well, as she was too tired to go to work on Monday despite having an entire weekend of mostly sleeping and eating.

And walking. We did a lot of walking around in the glorious sunshine on Saturday. We went back to Balancing Rock, and then we drove over to the ferry in Freeport and went to Brier Island, which I hadn’t been too, and went to Pond Cove and then to the Lighthouse. It was warm enough to have a picnic.

Crazy weather.

And then it lashed rain all day Sunday.

Monday I watched movies. I finally saw Junebug and I ( Huckabees. I really loved Huckabees. I was watching the scene between Mark Wahlberg and his wife with my head under the pillow, remembering a recent conversation I had with Himself about letting the engine idle.

For conversation, read completely po-faced lecture.

For Open Spaces, read Sierra Club of Canada.

But yeah, a truly great movie.

Junebug was pretty good too, but I really, really disliked the main character, Madeleine, and her husband. And I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to or not. So I didn’t enjoy it so much. Although I was really taken with the way everyone else in the family just got right back into their groove after they left, even though they (Madser and hubby) probably thought they were the centre of that little universe. And will presumably agonise about visiting again.

Quite a bit to chew on there, alright.

Random, Iberian literature, and Arafat

Well, Queenie’s been sitting in bed with her laptop for about thirty minutes now, fiddling away, finding radio stations and checking other people’s blogs and messing about with her own layout and then deleting it. Because she can’t think of anything to write about today.

OHMYGOD, I forgot to check my site meter… hang on a tic.

That’s better. Checking the site meter – the last bastion of the lazy blogger. I do it for two reasons. One, some day, I will break the invisible twenty five visitors a day barrier the blog seems to have erected.

Why twenty five? It’s so random. And yet so predictable. Does that prove or disprove creationism? The apparent pattern in random circumstances. Or is that chaos theory? If it is chaos theory, that disproves it, doesn’t it? Unless the benign God created chaos theory. People who believe in creationism should read accentmonkey is ainm dom’s latest post.

Or does chaos theory have anything to do with creation?

Queenie has a little brain fart as she realises she has come up against another of the black holes in her knowledge.

Mental Note No. 5,426 to self – read up on this ‘how the earth was created’ shit for once and for all. Or get Myles to explain it to her. Again.

The second reason I check my site meter is because it is very interesting to see why people happen upon my site. Today it was someone looking for a Shakespeare quote that I had used recently. But it can be totally random – either something I mention that they are searching for, such as Jester’s, Bordentown, or Michael Waldhuber.

Islamic jihad for Dummies.

Let’s see how long that will take to hook some unsuspecting fish in Colombus, Ohio.

I have a lot of fans there you know.

I just finished reading a twenty page article in The Atlantic on Yassir Arafat’s legacy, which focused a lot on how he systematically beggared the Palestinian Authority and its citizens in order to be Abu Ammar. At the end, less than 10% of the money pouring into Palestine was being spent on the people there in ways those of us in the West would accept as 'proper governance'. The rest was being siphoned off and funnelled back in through the Fatah network.

Did you know that Fatah spelt backwards is a word for death?

And that Arafat spent an hour every day arranging his kaffiya into the shape of Palestine.

I don't believe that myself.

The article also included the best description of Ehud Barak that I have ever read:

He combines the hyperactive, engaging manner of the smartest ten year old boy on the planet with a cold, analytical way of describing events that suggests the personality of the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I have decided that The Atlantic is the best magazine in the world bar the London Review of Books. But it’s okay because they are complementary. I found a big stack of back issues in the filing room in work today, so that’s the rest of the week sorted, bus-wise.

I have also decided that the reason why I like it so much is because I am a total girl when it comes to non-fiction. Give me a twenty page article on a person or an event that paints the scene in journalistic sentences and I’m happy. Make me read a full length book (unless it is the biography of some writer I really admire) and I’m a bored little Queenie.

Occasionally, I make an attempt to change this. Take down Mental Note No. 2,356 and brush the dust off it. I went into Dulles Books on Barrington today full of good intentions. I was going to buy TWO non-fiction books and I was going to read both of them to the end and I was going to remember some of them and I was going to be ERUDITE.

It took all of twenty five seconds for me to drift over to the Literature section.

Another twenty four minutes and thirty five seconds later, I was standing at the bus stop with an Arturo Perez-Reverte I hadn’t managed to find previously, The Flanders Panel, and a novel called Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels, of whom I haven’t heard before.

The Flanders Panel is a mystery, as all Perez-Reverte’s novels are (apart from series about the sword guy, or the Viggo series, as I now call them). It is an art mystery, involving an inscription on a 500 year old Flemish triptych and an attractive young restoration expert.

A well-worn groove for Queenie.

The other might be a bit different, who knows. And I still have Shalimar the Clown, which I am savouring the thought of rather than reading, as I know when I read it I will immediately want to go to Kashmir, and I can’t do that just yet.

Peres-Reverte is one of my favourite writers. God bless Harvill Press and Jersey Girl, who pointed it out to me one day in a bookshop. Speaking of, I just finished Jose Saramago’s The Double. I discovered Saramago, who is Portugese and who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, using the Harvill Press method of buying books.

The Harvill Press method of buying books

Go to a bookshop. Go to the fiction section. Stand at A. Turn your head sideways. Scan the rows of books until you see the Harvill spine (black with a little lion logo). Remove book. Continue until you get to Z. Figure out how many of the books you can afford. Spend an hour trying to get the pile down to an affordable size. Leave the rest on the Special Offer table. Pay for your books. Go home. Read. Repeat as necessary.

Anyways, I had discovered Saramago a few years ago one day when I realised I had gotten to S and had read most of the Harvill books. But I had bypassed him a couple of times. So I brought home The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, against my better judgement, which turned out to be a pile of cack anyways, as the novel blew the top of my head off at the time.

Turns out Sr. Saramago was born in 1922 and only achieved literary success in the eighties, after the military junta in his native Portugal was dismantled. He now lives in Lanzarote, which I have visited a few times, but I have never been able to locate him there.

In fact, he might even be dead now, I have just realised I don’t know.

So many gaps in my brain coming to the fore today.

Anyways, I am digressing terribly tonight due to my lack of a theme for this post. Jersey Girl gave me The Double when I was leaving Jersey this Christmas and I have only just finished it.

Oh my.

What a slow burn.

I kept thinking about it all day today. About who were the bad guys, and who were the victims. And when I started it, the first thirty pages were SO annoying I ploughed through them only because I like Saramago and I respect JG’s judgement in the life of the page.

It’s about a mild-mannered history teacher who is suffering from that peculiar male ennui that comes from being middle-aged, divorced and bored. A friend gives him a video to watch. He notices that one of the supporting actors is his double. He decides to track him down.

As one of the quotes on the back says, Saramago is so talented, he can write about nothing as if it is the most important thing in the world and make it so (I’m paraphrasing here).

A definite recommendation, if you ever spot it.

It's official...

As the Queen Dad said when I was a lot younger than I am today, I am old enough to know better.

You are a Social Liberal (81% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (69% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test

Snow Day's a Slow Day

Snow Day. Halifax shut down this morning after a nor’easter and a foot and a half of snow last night. So no work.

Hurrah.

And I only had to spend a couple of hours digging us out of the house. Three strapping lads living here and Marissa and I were out shovelling snow. I swear, they are the laziest bastards I have ever come across. And grumpy about it too!

We tramped to the garage and got out the snow shovels and dug a path to the kitchen door, then dug a path to the front door, then dug a path to the road, then dug a jogging path past our house and next door’s house (because he’s away at the moment). Because our road is one of the big jogging routes in Halifax and there are dozens of people taking advantage of the snow day to get out for a run.

The wind was rising again and blowing the snow around a bit. Everything was covered in white powder, too soft and loose to make snowmen or even proper snowballs. Some cross-country skiers passed by, swish-swashing along the snow-covered path beside the train ravine across the road. The snow plough passed. The guy driving it pretended to swerve in and push the sludge into my freshly shovelled path. I wagged my finger at him. He laughed so much he nearly fulfilled his own intentions.

Snow Day. A day free from paid work so that the snow, or some of it anyway, can get shovelled out of the way. How else can the province get back on its feet?

Pay someone to sweep the paths? They do in Dartmouth, but not in Halifax.

And they’re reducing property taxes by 5% this year.

Sigh.