Elvis lives and is a Saskatchewanian

Friday evening. Finally. Just me and the Carassius auratii. Or should that be the Carassii Auratii? Or the Carassii Auratis?

The goldfish. I wasn’t in the kind of school that did Latin. We did woodwork instead. Bloody good school it was too.

Yes, the goldfish. Swimming around contentedly. Boy are they going to get a big surprise when they get a groovy new tank tomorrow. As you may remember, I named them after two candidates I worked with in the federal election. I have a new candidate. Well, not new, I’ve been canvassing with him since last September. But new in that it’s his moment. By-election soon. If not a provincial election. The government called a by-election seven months late, to avoid the student vote as well as for other more arcane political reasons. And now the word is that they’ll drop the writ for a provincial election around the same time. So we have no idea what date we should be aiming for. Doesn’t matter. We’re ready anyways.

So BRING IT ON DUDES!

I’m so mature about these things.

He’s loving it so far. My candidate. He’s great. I hope he wins. He’ll be a wonderful addition to the legislature.

I shall buy another fish if he does and name him after him.

We have a campaign manager. In from Saskatchewan. What do you call someone from Saskatchewan? A Saskatchewanian? Jesus, I can’t believe I was able to spell that. Good schooling, d’ya know. Great Geography teacher, name of Papa Smurf.

Anyways, the new campaign manager, whom I’ll call El Presidente, for two reasons, one because he shares a surname with a very famous US President, the one that got the lads out of Vietnam after Johnson fucked the war up, and two, because he’s very presidential in that kind of way, anyways El Pres (fuck it, now that I look at it again I’ll call him Elvis) Elvis met us today and did the campaign manager thing.

Interesting.

I’m listening to Sleator-Kinney now. Very loud. Very Friday evening let’s get the work buzz out of my ears please loud.

Yeah, interesting.

He had a whole pile of work to do. He had to take charge, motivate us, calm us down, stoke us up, stroke us, stroke the candidate, stroke the people who were looking after him, listen to us, ignore us without letting on he was, get to know us, let us know how great he was, and get some work done. All in three hours.

I would have had a splitting headache and three mortal enemies if I had had to do it.

So I was impressed that he pulled it off. He remembered people’s roles in lieu of knowing them and it was uncanny how well it worked – politely rip up the literature, while apologising to the literature people, defer to the money guy while pushing the spending his way, joke with the sign people until they let go of their particular needs, stroke the co-chairs incessantly because it’s only week one and they’re exhausted with the prep already, ignore those of us who don’t have a specific role, ignore the woman who makes interesting but irrelevant and negative comments from slightly behind him all night, make jokes about stroking the candidate instead of actually doing it because he’d already sussed that he’s a little ball of self-confidence.

Although a small word of advice Elvis, the candidate is a total wind up merchant and there is no way you are going to get one up on him in a slagging contest. No way. Christ knows I’ve tried. He beats me hands down every time.

Yeah, I learned a lot by just watching him.

Not so impressed that the meeting broke up with nobody sure who was going to do all the work tomorrow. Apart from being sure that most of them weren’t going to do it. But we can’t have everything in one night, I suppose. This weekend will galvanise most of them.

He gave us a little talk about an election in Manitoba where he was given the keys of the office and then his Election Planning Committee fucked off and left him alone for the campaign. He ruined it for me when he said he’d won it, though. I would have lied, just to press home the point. But he’s a man, so of course he can’t look bad. Ever.

But anyways, Elvis is, by all accounts, the man to deliver. First and foremost, by his own account. But more importantly, by other people’s accounts.

We shall see.

It was refreshing to have a non-Nova Scotian in the room anyways. Actually, there were quite a few of us, but the rest of us kept quiet. Until Elvis had left the building.

I had to do that.

Political meetings are class. Me and Hotspur the goddess of spin were talking today about the ultimate sitcom – a The Office type eight episode series on a by-election. One of us really should do it.

Anyways, enough about work. Three twelve hour days on the trot. Too much for the week that was in it.

Enjoy the weekend Queenie, you’ve earned it.

It is truly spring today ... apparently

I got this email from a bloke I work with down on the South Shore sometimes... he's an immigrant too and hates the long winters, so he's been reassuring me with each slide back into winter... I thought I'd post this as it's interesting folklore

Dear Queenie,

We had the long-awaited "grass snow" (post-equinox snowfall #3) yesterday.

On Sunday, I dropped in to the La Have Bakery. The owner is a francophone from Quebec. She hates winter as much as I. This gives us a mutual interest - a prerequisite for small-town small talk. I mentioned we had not yet had the "third snow".

She thought aloud a minute. "We had the Sugar snow, then the Shad snow, but you're right, "she told me, "we haven't yet had the Crow snow.

So we compared notes on the names of the snowfalls. Sugar refers to Maple Syrup production, and the beginning "sap runs" of late March. This equates to our "smelt snow".

Shad are an anadromous member of the Herring family, like Alewife (a/k/a Gaspereau, Kayak). They run up the St. Lawrence and into larger Quebec rivers, like the Saguenay. The timing of Quebec Shad runs roughly coincides with the arrival of migrant Newfoundland Race Robins (the black-headed ones) in Nova Scotia. Thus, Shad Snow=Robin Snow.

I am left to conclude our Grass Snow equates to Quebec's "Crow" snow. Crows are not truly migratory, but they do withdraw from the northernmost parts of their range (leaving behind their relative, the Raven). As Spring comes, the Crow recolonizes areas of its range abandoned in winter. This happens in mid-April.

The long and short of it is that you may now conclude it is True Spring!

Cheers
Paul

Cheers yourself Paul... it had better be!

New Room, New Roomie, New Election Date

Well, now I’ve dried my eyes and got a beer from the fridge and Shazz called to see whether I was okay and I was as soon as I talked to her of course and there are millions of people in the world in worse shape than us, so it’s time to get on with it.

So, what’s Queenie been up to?

Lots and lots.

New Room

First and foremost, Psycho Bruce is GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Queenie got his room, which is FANTASTIC. Why he spent a minute downstairs is beyond us. We love this room. I love this room.

It runs almost the length of the house, with sloped ceilings that I bang my head off all the time, and four windows, two of them skylights. There’s a walk-in closet and a little bathroom. There are four large cupboards, two at either end, in which you can sit. Missy told me the last tenant but one used to smoke weed in one of them.

I have a new rug, and loads of new mirrors and candles and all kinds of nautical collectibles and stones from Nova Scotia and glass bottles scattered round, and some paintings that I acquired this year, and all my windchimes, and my books, and an aloe vera plant Himself’s sister gave me.

And the fish of course. They love their new room. Although the tank is pitifully small and I will buy a new one this weekend.

And Missy gave me her television when she left, which was just class of her, so now I can eat crisps in bed and watch tv whenever I feel like doing just that.

Of course, that’s why Psycho B didn’t spend much time up here, as he was too cheap to buy a tv despite the fact that he worked in an electronics shop.

New Roomies

So PB is gone. Missy is gone. Off to Toronto to live with her man. Swept in for a flying visit last week and went off again tonight.

Now Melanie has moved in. She’s Acadian and she watches French tv all the time. She’s very nice. We get on well.

So it’s all good. Missy’s room is up to let at the moment, so fingers crossed.

And the two guys downstairs are subletting for the summer, but they are subletting to clones of themselves so that shouldn’t be a problem.

We are now a two car household. Mr. E. next door is going crazy. This morning he tried to block us all in with his old VW, because otherwise we would drive on his tarmac to get out and it ‘gets scuffed’.

Whatever.

As Himself says, ‘old people can be very strange’.

Writing workshop

This was very exciting. Halifax had a Writers Fest, which was a bit small and too packed into five days to be much use to someone with other things to do. But they had one or two good authors in attendance, and I should give a plug to Frog Hollow Books on Spring Garden Rd., who organised it – well done for bringing some much-needed literary culture to the city. I’m about done with the music scene and the theatre here is very dull.

Although the gallery scene here is pretty good I must say. Lucy Liu had an exhibition of her work here a couple of weeks ago and it was very interesting stuff.

I attended a workshop held by Joseph Boyden, author of Three Day Road which was my favourite book last year, and two other guys, neither of whom could hold a candle to his comments.

Joseph told me the book is out in paperback in the UK now so you should all buy it. Well, I’m telling you to buy it on his behalf because he’s far too nice to say it, but he’s a real writer in the sense that all he cares about is selling his book. Which is good.

The workshop was very laid back, more a conversation about writing. We mostly talked about mixing reality and historical fact with fiction and what you could get away with and stuff. I forgot Margaret Atwood’s name, referring to her as ‘yer one that wrote the new book about Penelope’, to which it seemed the very room exhaled margedadwood in that really fast way in which people say it here.

Which was a bit embarrassing, but they let me away with it because I was Irish but really, I should know better. I mean, I do know better.

Anyways, Boyden made some really interesting comments about developing characters that I think will help me, as all the things he said not to do are what I always do. Like mapping things out too much for them. And he talked a lot about splitting characters that are too unwieldy into splinters and freeing the splinters into the map of the story to find their own path. Which sounds like a total buzz. If I could pull it off. It was comforting to hear that I am not experiencing anything new to a scribbler.

Anyways, I have a new, mental idea for a plot, which is so close to the soap opera that is my life that I can definitely write it I think, and hopefully I will get something down on paper in the next few weeks if my head is not wrecked by an election.

Election

Which it most likely will although I am not going to speculate online as people get fired for less these days.

Christ on a bicycle, am I the only political hack in the world that hates the things? Up early every day and bed late every night, not that it matters because there’s no sleep apart from tossing and turning-type dozing because you’re worrying about the next day. No proper meals for weeks because you never get to the supermarket; that constant grimy feeling of dust on your skin, because you’re in some cheap and nasty makeshift office surrounded by signs and annoying volunteers and printers that stop working at nine pm when you’re so tired you can’t see and then you have to call someone in fucking Kentville and drive the CD over there. Because the letter has to go out tonight. Except you have to find a Staples open first because one of the volunteers borrowed the box of CDs.

Knocking on doors. Knocking in signs. Being blinded by every opposition sign for weeks and weeks. Endless conversations with people who couldn't give a shit about voting despite the fact that the reason why they’re Canadian is because their forefathers actually did. Remembering to check the car in the driveway for a Veterans sticker. Commiserating about the price of gas with some biddy who has an SUV parked in the driveway of her forced air heated home.

I have radiators. I don’t count.

Endless conversations about whether it’s Vision of the Future or Future of the Vision or whether it should just be Future Vision, and me sitting there trying not to say ‘they put the fucking things in the BIN without reading them’.

Because they don't know what I mean when I say bin. And I'm not saying trash. Or store.

Ever.

Data entry. Putting the results of each day’s canvass into the database. Waiting for the printout. Poring over the numbers. Never enough numbers. Will we peak too late? Or if there’s a miracle and there are enough numbers, are we peaking too soon?

The voices of the phone canvassers in the background. The same pitch over and over again. Until I want to SCREAM!!!!!!!!! Getting really stroppy when yet another volunteer who hates the fact that I don't like her and don't bother hiding it wants to know why I won’t phone canvass – with my delightful accent.

Because no one in this country can understand a fucking word I say on the phone.

Being shushed for swearing in the vicinity of the phone canvassers. The campaign worker getting her own back by putting up a No Swearing sign.

What? What? Do you think they think politicians don’t fucking swear? I suppose we all shit glass too, do we?

Going to the smelly toilet down the back, that the vegan just used, for a weep. Going outside for a smoke in the rain. Bitching about everyone inside. Emptying the coffee pot for the fifteenth time that day.

Sigh.

Himself says he doesn’t know how I do it. He did it once for a couple of weeks. He couldn’t remember anyone’s name. He didn’t even try. He did that thing he does when he’s in a room full of egos. He just sat there waiting for input. And then he decided how to react.

And of course everyone loved him as they always do because he's got such a gentle soul. And such a kind wit. Not hard-edged like mine.

I wish I could do that.

Unfortunately, I turn into one of the egos when he’s not around to remind me it's just the work I do that makes me brittle. And that it will be all over soon. And I can just be me again.

Another sigh.

Swig of beer.

Time to post. Then I’ll tackle Easter.

Life is what happens when you should be blogging about it

Queenie’s back, sorry for the lapse in posting. She had to live her life with huge intensity for the last couple of weeks. People coming and going and talking and discussing and phoning and thinking and spending precious time with each other and saying hello and goodbye and giving stuff away and taking stuff in and spending more precious time and making decisions and plans and then thinking some more.

But the rush is over now. Everything's done and decided and all we have to do now is wait for life to work itself out as it knows best. And to try to let that happen.

Himself is gone. Left on a jet plane this afternoon. For Grassland Alberta. Which is actually on Google Earth. That was important. To be able to spy on the place.

We circled the globe a few times last night and I showed Himself where I was born and where I lived and worked in Dublin and where all my friends lived. And we looked at the Rockies and the Andes and the Himalayas and Baghdad and Kandahar and Africa (which is covered in pop ups!!!!) and Venezuela and India and BC and where Himself is from and where he's gone now.

Queenie came back to an empty house tonight and let herself in quietly. Walked around feeling his imprint everywhere. He had put the dishwasher on. He had washed the saucepans. He had put her phone back on its charger. He had found her cigarettes and put them in her room. He had fixed her keyboard (which was one of the reasons why she wasn’t too pushed about blogging recently). He had fed the fish. He had bought new batteries for her clock, and glue for her scrapbooks.

He had put a new roll of toilet paper on the toilet paper holder (Queenie's hatred of doing which was the subject of a previous blog).

That’s when Queenie started to cry. What a picture she must have made, leaning against the little cistern (he had put the seat down of course) with her coat still on and her bag over her shoulder (her lovely, dusky blue, soft, thick, chamois leather, designer, French, hand-stitched shoulder bag, which she bought for two hundred euro even though she had no money, as an expensive reminder, on the day she swore she'd let herself be fucked over by a man for the last time in her life, the clasp of which broke irreversibly today) and her library books in her arms, eventually sitting there on her little en-suite, howling with grief over the absence of a man who would not believe that a shoulder bag could cost that much, but who would buy it for her anyway if she said she had to have it, which she never would of course because she doesn't need designer bags anymore. A man who would happily spend all afternoon figuring out how to fix the clasp if it was a wet Saturday and Queenie was doing something solitary and there was nothing else to be fixed or built or moved or painted or scraped or whatever. Who would have a piece of metal 2mm x 4mm somewhere in his universe that would do the job perfectly. Who would add some flourish of his own to improve the design or just make it beautiful. Who would decide to remove the stains in the leather caused by Queenie's complete disregard for her possessions and present it to her good as new just to see her reaction. A man who never remembers to make himself breakfast, but who remembers every like and dislike and phobia of the woman he loves.

Some things in life are no-brainers.

Junos just for Paycocks really

Well, Coldplay finally came to Halifax and Halifax fucked the sound up.

Some Canadian Idol alumnus who looked like Brian McFadden won all the awards.

Pamela Anderson hosted the awards but Buck 65 actually hosted them from the orchestra pit. Because she is that stupid. Or on drugs.

No other possible reason.

Broken Social Scene complained about television executives who think they can create pop stars through Canadian Idol, presumably because they didn't win as many awards as the CI bloke and his fellow alumni.

Hurrah. There’s no BS about BSS. And they won a gong too and deserved it.

The CI bloke kept banging on about Canada the way BMcF used to talk about Kerry (Katona that is). As in how great it is.

Methinks the CI bloke doth protest too much…

Queenie gave up watching after that, being in the middle of a very intricate scissors-related task that couldn’t co-task with extended advertisement viewing interspersed with occasional musical interludes, and so missed Bryan Adams playing 18 Till I Die after he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Mark it down on ‘things I didn’t realise I wanted to do until they were over and I missed it.’

And all of Halifax is knackered after the weekend, except Queenie, who missed it all.

Speciman Days a total letdown

And if all that posting and ranting wasn't bad enough...

My favourite author Michael Cunningham has let me down terribly.

Shame on you, Michael.

And shame on all the people listed at the back of the book as his readers and collaborators. Has he succumbed to the hype and surrounded himself with sycophantic hangers on?

It would appear so. Or else his mates don't know shit about structure, plot, etc.

Do not buy it. Do not read it even. Unless you don't believe me. I would understand if you didn't. I don't believe me.

I read a New Zealand review of it which says:

Specimen Days is a genre-bending, haunting, and transformative ode to life in our greatest city-a work of surpassing power and beauty by one of the most original and daring writers at work today.

No it's not. It's a pile of stinking fish poo.

Funny how they always say 'original and daring' when they're too scared to say 'this is a pile of stinking fish poo'.

I borrowed it from the library and read it over three nights - it's in three parts - and when I was discussing it with Jersey Girl on the phone last night I had already forgotten the middle section.

It's that poor. Compared to The Hours, which was riveting, A Home at the End of the World, which was heart-breaking and mesmerising, and Flesh and Blood, which was an unforgettable portrait of how an unhappy man can destroy a family.

I'm not even going to bother reviewing it, apart from saying putting together an appalling pastiche of immigrant Irish life, the pre-menopausal hallucinations of a cop with a PhD in psychology (!?!), and an android who falls in love with a lizard from another planet, pretending it's all connected in some really deep way by setting it all in the bit of New York that aspiring writers want to live in, and calling all the characters by variations of the same names is rubbish. Even if the Walt Whitman quotes in the text are nice.

Of course they are. They're Walt effin' Whitman.

What is the grass? The grass is life you muppet!! Even the child knows that.

I'm not falling by the wayside lightly. I own every one of his books except this one.

Maybe I'm not getting it.

I don't think so. Even when I don't get it, if it's good, I like it without understanding why. Plus JG didn't like it and we can't both be wrong about a book.

Goodbye Michael. It's been great. I even enjoyed the lazy tome, Land's End: A Tour of Provincetown about your summer pad. In fact, it inspired my blog in ways, back when I had a summer. Maybe you should do like me and re-enter the real world for a bit. Get your edge back.

I hereto announce that Joseph Boyden is the new Michael Cunningham in my life and he's coming to the Halifax Writers' Fest next week so I shall tell him that.

Buy the Three Day Road. It's fab.

But you knew that already, as it was my favourite book last year.

Third attempt to blog about something nice

This day has gone pear-shaped. And it started out so well. Queenie woke this morning all refreshed instead of feeling like a dog’s dinner as usual, and pottered quietly for an hour like she needs to in order to face the day. And then murmured to Himself for a bit while she had her coffee outside in the sun.

Yes, outside in the sun. It hit thirteen degrees today. It felt like twenty five.

Then she got dressed and put on a jacket and sauntered into work and was too hot when she got there.

And then the government had a really, really bad day. And some of it was partly her fault. And she talked to yet another senior civil servant who joked about her being in a big office in a few months. Wondered whether we sit around trying to decide what jobs we’ll have when we win the election.

Like we have time.

Queenie only remembers one conversation like that, and it was more about which of us would actually get to keep a job, rather than corner offices being divvied out by the fall of a pair of orange dice.

Funny how all the senior CSs are sucking up already and the junior ones are getting rattier and ruder by the day.

Not really. Cream rises to the top, doesn’t it?

Christ on a bicycle, Queenie has just spent twenty minutes writing nasty texts and deleting them. She must be getting her period. Of course, there’s a big eclipse today as well.

That’s probably it.

Yeah, so the day went fairly well until about 3.30 and then it was just too nice to be in the office, so Queenie sat in the office staring out at the sun on the harbour, mesmerised by the little silver quickenings on the crests of the waves.

Tick. Tock. Piles and piles of work to do and no inclination to do any of it till 4.45, which meant she had to stay late.

Then off down the library for the ESL class. Which is driving her crazy now. It’s just too much on top of a day in the Office of Being Prepared for Every Eventuality, those Eventualities being the Subject of much Discussion and Change on a Daily Basis, without any Sign of the Pile of Said Eventualities being Reduced in Order to Affect Some Order.

Ever.

Definitely pre-menstrual. Queenie always Capitalises far too much when she’s pre-menstrual.

Then after she got out of class, she decided to hang around town so she went for a burger, which is still sitting half-way down her oesophagus.

And so to this evening’s original post

Queenie should just give up and go to bed.

But she’s had too much coffee so she’ll be wide awake until three this morning.

And Himself has either switched the phone off (which is against the Rules), or gone to a friend’s house that’s not within range of the tower (which is against the spirit of the Rules).

The fish are still excitedly examining every inch of their clean bowl.

Some days, Queenie wishes she were a goldfish. Instead of just feeling like she’s one.

Something nice after a glass of wine

Or during, rather. I’m still sipping my wine, which I put in a glass even though I felt like putting the neck of the bottle into my mouth and just not gagging, no matter what, in an alcoholic’s version of Deep Throat.

The Brewster has returned Chez Queenie and is currently running up and down the stairs talking to himself. He put a six pack in the fridge as soon as he came in though, so he’ll be sleeping near that and my plans to run naked around MY house this evening in the knowledge that I am alone (except for Justin the stoner downstairs who wouldn’t even blink as I streaked by, unless it was on a skateboard) are currently on hold.

Never mind, I am currently skidding through the lounge, butt-naked and hair flying behind me, in my mind.

Amazing what a few grapes, water, yeast and some Chilean peasant’s smelly feet will do to a girl’s mood.

And Himself is back on radar, after thirty hours of not answering his phone, (apart from a minute this morning) due to having to sort his life out.

Funny how women sort their life out on the phone and men sort it out by not being on the phone.

It wasn’t Queenie that he was avoiding of course. ‘No phone games’ is one of the Rules.

One of which Queenie has just broken. Well, the spirit of one of the Rules. Not the letter. That took her all of four days to figure out. She’s not a political maven for nothing.

Minor scuffle over the invisible communication wires due to an unfortunate choice of words that meant a potential scenario was presented as a fait accompli rather than as a topic for discussion and joint decision-making, which annoyed her no end. Queenie was not up for being mollified by some protestation of innocence on the matter. It’s been a long day and Service Canada are being typical Canadian public servants par excellence (why Queenie's countryfolk bang on about how great Canada is she will never know. She will go home with the Holy Grail of that at some point) and PsychoB is still here and Queenie’s TESL classes in the library are rapidly turning into SocialWorkersRUS. So she’s not in the mood for any slippage on the presentation front.

Plus we’ve been here before and we have to learn the Rules. So the minor tussle was followed by a long silence. Which was then followed by:

‘I’m not allowed to hang up on you, so is there anything else?’

‘No??? (Where is she going with this?)’

‘Okay. Bye so.’

Click.

That’ll show him.

Back to Athabasca…

He can fuck off if he thinks he’s going back to Athabasca.

Queenie means it.

And he can take the goddamn fish with him.

She spent half an hour this evening scraping fish poo off the bottom of the tank.

Time for another glass of wine.

Who's going to have the last laugh?

Words cannot describe how fucked over I feel this evening.

PsychoB sat there and lied through his yellow teeth about moving out today. ‘Oh yeah, I’ll be going on Wednesday’, he said to me. ‘It’s my day off.’

Something about the truck coming and packing his stuff before the hockey game and then leaving a few bits and then getting a friend to swing by for that on Friday.

My bullshitometer started ringing madly when I heard that, because I’ve never seen him in the company of a stranger never mind a friend. Although one or two rough-voiced blokes call him on the phone occasionally.

But I allowed myself to get excited.

Left it nice and late to get home this evening, just so he’d be gone.

He wasn’t there.

BUT ALL HIS FUCKING STUFF IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Going to calm down and have a glass of wine now. And then blog about something nice.

Sitting in bed, Sunday Morning

Sunday morning. Lovely and sunny. The bells of the church are ringing for Mass down on Spring Garden Rd. The denizens of the South end are gathering in the Baptist Church down the road.

Queenie and Himself are sitting in bed. Queenie is blogging. Himself is reading some dreadfully boring magazine about trucks. And showing her pictures of the nice ones. Queenie could give a shit…

What is it about men and magazines about machines?

The fish are puddlin’ around in the tank, grazing the bottom for the remnants of their breakfast. The only sounds in the house are the oxygen bubbling and the keys of the laptop. Missy is asleep. It’s her last day in the house. She’s moving to Toronto to live with her boyfriend next week. PsychoB is asleep. He’s leaving next weekend. Queenie will have the house pretty much to herself for a while after that.

Queenie loves Sundays. Particularly here, because there’s nothing to do. So you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. Although Queenie is going canvassing at one o’clock.

By-election.

If it’s not a federal election, it’s a provincial election. If it’s not a provincial election, it’s a by-election. This one would be in Queenie’s riding.

Queenie was out canvassing on Thursday too. Crappy night. Cold, so Queenie wrapped up well. Then we ended up doing an apartment block so she was too hot.

Lots and lots of people who aren’t Canadian citizens. Who can’t vote. And students. Who don’t vote. Queenie was well ratty by the end of it. We might have got seven votes. And she wasn’t getting phone numbers from people, because she hates imposing on them in that way. So the candidate was getting a bit annoyed, but hey, Queenie didn’t care that night. Although she felt a bit guilty afterwards.

And then we met an Irish couple from Templeogue, who had moved to Canada fifteen years ago and hated it, but couldn’t go home (presumably had sold the house in Templeogue). He was working down in the shipyard in the harbour. There was some issue about his employers not realising his huge worth and letting him work on propellers. Queenie switched her ears off and just nodded while he talked. Then she asked for his vote. He couldn’t. He refused to become Canadian, didn’t want to take the oath of allegiance.

“My father fought in the War of Independence and he’d be spinning in his grave”, he said. Queenie just looked at him.

My father would spin in his grave. Are you so scared of your parents that you imagine their anger can touch you from there? Or is it your own prejudices, that you suspect might be archaic and completely out of touch, so you are using your father as an excuse to be a historical aberration?

Eejit. As they would say in Templeogue.

His wife in the meantime hovered in the background, grumbling at him for not taking the oath and saying ‘I’m a citizen’. Queenie was trying to canvass her over the murmur of the propeller idea but hubbie was having none of it. He pulled the door too a little so he could have the canvassers’ full attention. We gave up then. Moved on down the corridor to the next apartment.

Chinese. Turkish. Iranian. Korean. All of them here to study. Paying exorbitant fees for the privilege.

Education is some moneymaker in this province. Second biggest growth industry after call centres.

Anyhow, time to get up and make breakfast for Trucker Guy. He had to haul Queenie out of bed, dump her in the bath, towel her down and feed her yesterday because she called round to see Shazz with a bottle of wine the night before, and then drank most of the bottle of wine because Shazz doesn’t really drink alcohol. And consequently felt as sick as a dog all day because her days of necking a bottle of wine and then being able to function the next day are well and truly behind her. And she hadn’t realised. Mental note to self to remember this truth.

But Shazz and she agreed that it was a very pleasant evening.

Damn, damn, PsychoB seems to be stirring. A long day in front of the telly watching sport, followed by the weekly boiled chicken debacle. He puts the chicken on to boil the fat off it. (Why he doesn’t just buy lean chicken we don’t know). Then he cuts the potatoes and carrots into little pieces and boils the fuck out of them too. When they boil over he doesn’t notice because he has no sense of smell, so Queenie has to get out of bed and shout at him. (And then spend an hour cleaning the cooker on Monday evening).

When ALL of the nutrients in the food have boiled away for at least an hour, Bruce eats some of his dinner and puts the rest in empty yoghurt pots for snacking on during the week.

One. More. Week. Of this shit.

Queenie can do this.

FBIII: Cast a cold eye... last march revisited

Here’s another peep at the stuff Queenie was saying last year.

Here’s the headlines from one of her favourite posts for March 2005; the five reasons why she should go to Canada. With some exciting, new perspective.

Canadian society does not revolve around alcohol

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

God, how naïve is Queenie. She’d totally forgotten about the joys of homegrown.

Seriously, but, alcohol is frowned upon more in Nova Scotia than in Ireland, as the Baptist influence is very strong here. But the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation is doing pretty well all the same, thank you very much.

Canadian society revolves around ‘family’, watching family members playing hockey/soccer (which Queenie reckons is the Nova Scotian choice of hurling or rugby) at the weekend, watching telly (thirty hours a week per person), playing Grand Theft Auto, and eating.

And there’s the occasional pig roast.

All of which can be accompanied by beer. If you’re not a Baptist.

And the Queen Dad was right when he declared his opinion about Canadians from his hospital bed a year ago.

Queenie won’t print what he said, being in the middle of a visa renewal process and not wanting to be rude.

Well, he was right about most, but not all Canadians. There’s a small island off the coast of Western Nova and a social democrat party that have what Queenie would consider a more Celtic notion of fun than many Nova Scotians.

And most of Cape Breton of course. And probably one or two others in Halifax. Eleven thousand students for a start.

Funny how Queenie managed to find them all!!

But yeah, family… very complicated subject over here.

In Ireland, mostly, still nowadays, well where Queenie comes from anyway, you get stereotypical Irish mammy, pretty good chance of Irish daddy, fairly likely to have a brother or two, one of which will have a beer gut and the other of which’ll have hurler’s bum (unless they’re from Terenure in which case it’ll be rugby gut/ bum), and lots of sisters. Or vice versa.

Here, you could walk into anything. I keep being shocked by how shocked I am at the situations I find here.

Ya can take the Catholic boggirl out of the bog, but you can’t take the whipmarks off her back, no sirree bob no.

Queenie might get a date in Canada

Well, Queenie got Himself here, didn’t she? Although she might not have him for much longer if she doesn’t stop waking him up for company at one in the morning when she can’t sleep for worrying about stupid things, and tending towards being ‘not a morning person’ because she’s had no sleep.

Although he did rub her neck till she got sleepy last night after she woke him up, while managing to go back to sleep himself. So he’s ruined any chance of a full night’s sleep for Himself if she’s around now.

Queenie is a nicer person when she is not in Ireland

Not this week she ain’t. But that’s just because mercury’s retrograde and there’s two lunar eclipses and it’s just wrecking her little crab head.

That and the stress horse roundabout.

But overall, she’s a nicer person. In fact, she’s almost stopped being rude to waiters.

But she gets very homesick for Everyone Except Himself now and again. And that makes her miserable.

That and slave wage employers and lazy civil servants and people who don't clean up after themselves.

Queenie might be able to change career direction in Canada

Hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Enough said.

Bad enough that the Queen Dad has been proven right twice in one post. Not going to underline it.

Queenie is doing a course in the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design this term. She is. She is going to embrace her innate creativity.

No really. She sent for the brochure today.

Paper arts, possibly, she's always wanted to make beautiful notebooks.

Having a notebook thing.

And they do the course here.

Queenie’s emotional baggage regarding her last, failed relationship might get sent to Alaska by mistake. Which would be NO BAD THING.

Well it didn’t of course, but it sure looks different under the western Atlantic light.

Time to get the rug and the plate, Queenie reckons.

Anyone up for it?

First day of Spring

First day of Spring today (or yesterday now probably), hip hip hooray.

Me hole. As accent monkey would succinctly put it.

Don and the sidekick were on CBC radio bright and early this morning burbling about the equinox and springtime coming to Canada, and the ickle bunny rabbits and bear cubs and yadda yadda, and how it was a balmy 1 degree Celsius, but unfortunately Queenie hadn’t slept well the night before so it was all heard through a red mist that was so visible in the room, Himself hid under the quilt until she left for work even though he had promised to take her there himself, and then scarpered for the island at 9.20am, when he knew Her Royal Despotickness was chained to her desk for seven hours and could not give him the evil eye as he sped across the MacDonald Bridge.

Queenie forgave him. She knows what a bitch she can be in the morning. Sunday morning she opened her eyes and when he said ‘good morning baby, how did you sleep’, she started lecturing him about what a useless layabout he was and how he’d better sharpen up. Or else.

Or else what?

Or else she’d sarcastic him to death, probably. She didn't know. It’s not Himself she’s angry at. Queenie is angry at the whole world at the moment. The magic horse roundabout of stress has started up again, just because the world is waking up, and it’s going round and round in her head and driving her crazy at the moment.

Stress No. 1: Work permits, renewal of one in particular which is taking forever.

Why does Queenie have to ask permission to stay in a place that continuously moans about how it doesn't have enough workers? Why don't they have to ask her? Why can't she produce pages and pages of forms and get them to fill them out and then keep them on her desk for weeks and weeks pretending she's busy so they'll hire more staff so she can surf the internet when she's supposed to be working for the Canadian civil service?

And why can't she stay in one of those jobs, while we're at it.

Oh that's right, she had one before and she went mad with boredom.

Stress No. 2: Does Queenie actually want said work permit? Or would she prefer to hightail it home? To what? Apart from Everyone Except Himself??

This particular painted horse goes up and down like a demented hurdy gurdy in a badly made horror film and is worthy of a post of its own. Not today though, or the red mist will spray on the computer and blow the circuit board.

Stress No. 3: Why does Queenie live thousands of miles away from Everyone Except Himself? Why can’t they all just come and live here? God knows, there are enough houses for sale on the island for everyone to fit.

Stress No. 4: Why does capitalism think it’s a good idea for us all to leave our little towns and villages, perched on the edge of the lovely Atlantic ocean, and move to horrible big urban centres with too much traffic and not enough space to go around. Why does Canadian capitalism, operating in the second biggest country in the effin’ world, which is mostly empty, think this?

Because it wants us all to work in Walmart, that’s why.

Stress No. 5: Why does Queenie ALWAYS have to put the effin’ toilet roll on the toilet roll holder?

WHY?

What sin is she paying for?

She did it when she was young. Even though she didn't want to. It’s not like she never did any chores back then and has to pay for it now.

Canadians are terrible at doing chores. Really dreadful. Queenie has never seen anything like it. In Ireland it’s just boys who are crap. Here the women are worse.

Queenie and one other person are the only people who load and unload the dishwasher and clean the kitchen in work. Queenie is the only person who does it at home. The new housemate who is replacing PsychoB insisted on dragging Queenie out of work last week, to interview her for the job of housemate, and during the interview (which focused a lot on having people round – great – more dirt) commented on how clean the house was. Queenie sat there pretending it all happened by magic, poker-faced for a change, thinking, ‘dream on bitch, my time is OVER’.

Queenie sent a text to Himself complaining about being the house mom after having to pack Missy’s jeep full of her crap for her this evening because she’s too weak to do it herself, and he sent her back a text that was so RUDE she can’t even follow through on her threat to publish it on this blog, as the Queen Mother would read it some day when Queenie’s forgotten about it, and faint on the spot.

And the threat isn't working either.

Stress No. 6: What the effin’ hell is Queenie doing living in a house full of layabouts when she could be in her own little flat with all of her things and no toilet paper holder to worry about?

Because she’s in the wrong country of course.

Stress No. 7: Does Queenie want to go back to living in 590 square foot of North Dublin? And having to queue for the shopping on a Sunday evening at nine pm?

No flippin’ way sirree bob!

There's another post. If Queenie can ever think clearly about it.

Stress No. 8: Elections, or lack thereof. Would someone piss or get off the pot? Before Queenie's politicians drive her to drink.

Queenie keeps thinking of the 1997 Irish general election, when the voices of sanity, the ones saying ‘we can keep going another year, we have a mandate’, were quelled by the overwhelming urge of the elected representatives to get a shiny new mandate from the people. And the people did what the Irish Independent told them to and fucked them all out on their ear.

Half of Queenie hopes that sanity will prevail and half of her hopes that insanity will prevail, just to get it over with.

IF THE WRIT IS DROPPED FOR JUNE WHEN THE QUEEN MUM AND DAD IS OVER, THEN YOUSE ARE ALL GETTING IT WITH A ROCK SAW.

That’s all I’m saying on the subject.

My, Queenie is shouty today. She finds shouting at the computer calms her down in a strange sort of way.

That and obscene language. It’s cathartic.

Stress No. 9: Wage slavery in Bumfuck, Nova Scotia. How in the hell is anyone supposed to live on eleven dollars an hour? Queenie doesn’t see the McCains or the Sobeys or the Irvings or any of that crew living on eleven dollars an hour. More like eleventy.

Camel. Eye of needle. And if that doesn’t tickle your fancy....

Eighteen inch rocksaw.

That’s all I’m saying on the matter.

Stress No. 10: Where’s the effing Spring?

Queenie's snowdrops are up, which makes it about January, Irishtime, she reckons.

Sigh...

Canada records warmest winter in history

Queenie was still very very cold, so she's a bit concerned about doing another one... in case...

Mike Oliveira
The Canadian Press

TORONTO - Canada is in the closing stretch of its warmest winter in recorded history, another upswing in an apparent warming trend that supports the notion that global warming is upon us, an Environment Canada climatologist said Monday.

Between December and February, the country was 3.9 degrees above normal - the warmest winter season since temperatures were first recorded in 1948.

On Monday, Environment Canada called the winter of 2005-2006 the kind of season that comes along once every 100 years.

It was obvious early on that it would smash records, said climatologist Bob Whitewood.

"We saw it coming from mid-January on, that we were seeing something quite remarkable," Whitewood said. "January was a very, very warm month . . . and then February pretty much locked it."

It was especially balmy in Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, where temperatures were six to eight degrees above normal, but every part of the country got a mild winter.

Winter hasn't been so warm since 1987, and this year's temperatures broke that record by 0.9 degrees.

"That's quite remarkable," Whitewood said. "We normally talk about tenths of degrees and this was almost one full degree past the previous record."

Environment Canada will spend the next year studying weather data because there's no conclusive explanation for the mild winter, he added.

Ocean temperatures can often be a factor, but there's been no significant El Nino effect - warm ocean waters creating abnormal weather conditions - this year.

While January's temperatures can be somewhat explained by the displacement of cold air that's usually parked over Hudson Bay, it still can't account for the overall record-trouncing temperatures and the trend they back up, Whitewood said.

"We historically have seen (an increasing) trend in winter-time temperatures of about two degrees (overall) over the last 60 years, so we're certainly moving towards warmer and warmer winters as time progresses."

Whitewood said the last 10 winters have been warmer than normal and along with this winter reflect what could be explained as global warming.

"When you talk about this kind of trend, it's sitting in very well with what our models would forecast for climate-change scenarios," he said.

"We're obviously a signatory to Kyoto so we are definitely recognizing it as a concern."

Former prime minister Jean Chretien signed on to the so-called Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas reductions in 1997, committing Canada to a six per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared those targets unattainable and promised a so-called made-in-Canada plan on greenhouse-gas emissions.

A recent international project called the Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study suggested global warming has already caused irreparable damage and has left polar ice melting at a rate of about 74,000 square kilometres each year - an area about the size of Lake Superior - and has been for the last 30 years.

About 120 scientists from 11 countries were involved in the Canadian-led research project and said there should be a focus in Canada and internationally on coping with the reality of global warming and minimizing the damage.

Whitewood said studying this year's winter will add more data to contribute to the debate on global warming.

"It'll give us more information on whether this is just a warm winter, or whether or not we're seeing some sort of trend."

'That's quite remarkable. We normally talk about tenths of degrees and this was almost one full degree past the previous record.'

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.