Why there is a worker shortage in Nova Scotia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave no stone unturned.

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

Rant alert

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

Extreme rant alert

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

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

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

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

Crappy work environment examples:

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

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

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

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

Enough said.

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

Let's see:

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

- Most immigrants to Canada are graduates.

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

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

They have missed the point completely.

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

- Immigrants are not stupid.

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

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

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

Extremely extreme rant alert

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tie a yellow ribbon to your SUV!

This is very funny.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8

Call myself an English graduate

So insouciance is a no.

The word I was looking for was sanctimony.

Breathtaking insouciance

I hope I'm using this word in the right context.

Today I sat and watched a presentation from a senior manager in a company that specialises in building systems for fighter jets. He showed a picture of Albert Einstein while talking about 'not knowing the things you don't know', which is of course Rummyspeak. Then he gave us all a lecture on the importance of ethics in business.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I just went back to the office and ate sweets all afternoon and wrote questions on the Nova Scotian economy (which according to this morning's seminar is going down the tubes fast).

And then it snowed.

Thank you for today Baby Jesus. I'll not forget this one in a hurry.

A Stern Warning

Read the Stern Review on Climate Change.

Well, read the Executive Summary anyways.

The Long Version if you don't mind.

Go on, it's only 27 pages. I read it on the bus home.

Thanks...

Happiness, by Robertson Davies

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

Don't say you weren't told now...

I hate when my horoscope orders me around

"It's my job to be emotional," rock music goddess Bjork told Nylon magazine. "Doctors cure diseases and shoemakers make shoes. It's my job to go through emotions and describe them to other people." By my astrological reckoning, this is also an apt description of the role you should play in the coming weeks, my fellow Cancerian. It's a perfect time for you to commune with every feeling on your vast palette, as well as to add some new colors and textures you've never imagined before. One more piece of advice: As you express the richness of your inner world to interested parties, be artistic and entertaining, never self-indulgent or sloppy.

Free Will Astrology (c)

I LIKE being self-indulgent and sloppy. 'Specially when I'm tired.

I've opened Queenie's Store on www.lulu.com by the way, for all your Christmas calendar shopping. You can shop for my stuff here. My margin is very small. I'm going for the bulk sales business model.

Actually, I was going for the high end market and then I looked at the competition and they were all charging less than me.

Maybe you should check out their stuff. Some of it is pretty good.

But then again, you KNOW me, don't you. Brand loyalty and all of that. Cradle to grave marketing.

Speaking of, I could probably do a baby calendar when I go home to Ireland, such is the level of fecundity on the big island. I have friends emailing me in extreme excitement to tell me they're going to be GRANDPARENTS these days.

ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want to hear about other things now please.

That sounds very Sarah Jessica doesn't it. I don't mean it to.

Thing is, there's a lot of baby talk in my physical surroundings and on my electronic airwaves, which is lovely and I'm all for being excited about new lives and new people arriving on the scene.

But I can't help thinking that there must be some people who have to listen to this stuff day in day out who don't want babies, or can't have babies, or won't have babies, or don't feel capable of rearing children, or have had miscarriages or have chosen to have terminations, or are facing into the emotional centrifuge that is IVF, or are trying to get accepted for adoption, or fostering, or whatever.

And I think that people who are lucky enough to produce issue with fuck all effort or thought (although I'm sure a huge amount of thought has gone into most of the issue I know about recently) - watch Queenie tiptoe around the sleeping baby of this issue - still, people who are lucky to have a perfect baby in their lives (or two or three) should be a bit more understanding of the huge range of emotions that constant babbling about how easy/ fantastic/ brilliant/ tiring/ exhausting/ etc etc babies are can bring on in those of us who fit into one or more of the other categories.

There. I've said it.

It needed to be said.

Back to lulu.com.

Now that I've alienated my entire customer base!

My photobook will be on electronic shelves soon as they get the template out of Beta.

Will SOMEONE please effing explain Beta to me sometime!

Mr. Monkey??

Anyone??

One final baby thought... wouldn't it be great if people could be as open about not having babies as they are about having them. That would sort it all out wouldn't it.

That'll never happen of course.

But it would get over the whole 'there I was just being excited about reproducing myself and hoping my mates were and now they're bitching about me on their blog which they have time to write because they're childless selfish bitches' backlash I totally deserve now.

I do love my future pension contributors. Everyone of them. And I promise to check out early to save them a few bucks.

Am I forgiven now?

I'm wondering why this is news

Some guy who used to run faith-based initiatives for Bush said:

There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," he said. "What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm."

Jesus Christ on a bike, what did he think he was getting into when he went into politics?

Harvest Full Moon tomorrow night

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

Modern day Clampetts

I had to meet with some oil people again yesterday. I keep having to meet with oil people who are over from Alberta politically schmoozing, as I am the researcher with responsiblity for stuff like that.

Because of what the oil industry in general is doing to the prairies, I am usually very cross with them and manifest my anger by looking over the top of my glasses at them and locking stares, which is becoming a more effective put down strategy as I get older.

Unfortunately they are almost always slightly modified cowboys, who act like they just happened upon enormous oil patches and the accompanying business wheeling and dealing, and they don't wear thousand dollar suits or smoke big cigars, or have Crackberries like other people who just think they are important, and consequently they are very charming in a completely non-schmoozy way, with strange body language and a hatred of having to suck up to politicians that's palpable. It's so funny and endearing I have to keep poking my guard to make sure it stays up.

Sometimes my job is very difficult!

Do headless android chickens run in electric circles?

I am starting to forget things. I don't know if it is my age, or if I am too mithered with work and other things to focus properly. I am a bit worried about it, as what I do is very much dependent on remembering a gazillion little things and multi-tasking them all the time.

But work is getting out of control. Today, the bus was late and slow so I spent most of the time reading the Halifax Regional Economic Development plan while getting into work. I got a good chunk of it read and hoped to have it finished by eleven. Since getting into work though, I have been interrupted so many times I gave up. I have had to deal with: school sidewalks, or lack thereof, adult literacy, energy efficiency in public buildings, the alcohol and gaming authority, trade union recognition in the food sector, violence in the workplace, workers compensation and wind energy. I have had to take calls, visits from lobbyists, journalists, members of the public, politicians, civil servants and colleagues.

I am now eating my lunch and writing this on my lunchbreak which I never get, because I am too tired in the evening to blog.

After lunch, I will try to get back to HRM economic development. Then after that, I have reading/ policy work to do on: gambling and young people, the Nova Scotia oil and gas industry, energy demand side management strategies, comparative Canadian labour relations legislation, elementary education policy in rural areas, pensions, the economic implications of trade liberalisation with east Asia (I kid you not), chronic pain in women workers (I assume my tendonitis is included in that), after which time my inbox will be full and it will all start over again.

My work outputs range from verbal briefings to written briefings, to meeting positions, to letters, to legislation, to parliamentary questions, to press releases, to spreadsheets.

My outcomes... well as with most knowledge workers I don't have any. Cos they're kinda hard to measure. But I'm sure I'm doing a great job. The key thing is to always know the answer to the question that you're being asked or to know how to get the answer in ten seconds.

Is everyone's job like this nowadays? Or is it just my sector? I think I am getting too old for this. Would someone like to give me a job where I don't have to multi-task so much all the time?
Where I could sit around and think about stuff for just a minute or two?

My kind of bear

Recent news reports from Washington State are telling the story of a bear who ambled up to a campsite and got into someone's cooler in a national park, drank 36 cans of beer and climbed a tree (unsteadily, I'd imagine) to sleep it off. Park rangers managed to coax him down from the tree and capture him, for release away from the campsite, using two cans of beer.

The hair of the dog etc..

Cape Breton Fall Colours

Everything you've ever heard about Cape Breton in the Fall when the leaves turn is true.

Magenta claret plum lilac crimson fire engine red rose peach apricot sienna umber terracotta traffic light orange tangerine lemon gold blonde palest yellow leaves all bouncing and shaking in the autumn wind against the backdrop of evergreens - sage, emerald, moss, Sherwood green. Tufts of heather and blazing ferns at the base of every tree. Rivers winding slowly through boulder-strewn valleys, waiting for rain to fill up the channels.

Winding roads up and down the North Mountain and Smokey, hugging the side of the hills with nothing beyond the cliff edge but a vast cerulean sky and a dark blue ocean capped with off-white tufts of foam meeting at a horizon that stretches all the way east to home.

Doubting the need for doubt is a doubtful strategy

I always try to remember the words of the great man himself, Plato:

One of the penalties of refusing to be involved in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Then sometimes I wonder whether he wasn't talking about me.

But it's not something I can ever have a conversation with my colleagues about, because doubt is a scarce commodity in political staffers.

Which is a bad thing, I think.

But maybe that's just me.

Tired. Of politics. And crazy men shooting women and children in schools because of the way they were raised. The men I mean.

Why do we raise our boys so badly?

The beginning of the end - edited version

So here it is.

Queenie is a bit stretched.

blah blah blah edited out rant that would get Queenie into a lot of trouble if anyone other than Ammonite saw it....

So would someone please give Queenie a reason why she should bankrupt herself and give herself an early nervous breakdown in order to keep trying to please a whole load of people who just fucking please themselves all the time without any regard for the financial, emotional and psychic strain of being all things to all people that being Queenie entails, just because she's an accomodating type of gal?

Oh that's right. There's no fucking reason is there. Just some obscure sense of responsibility somebody inculcated in her at an early age that makes sure she'll never just say fuck it and disappear into south america with the funds.

more ranting..

But of course there's a good reason. And Queenie is just being unreasonable when she can't see it on a wet Wednesday when she can't afford to eat supper even. And she's homesick. And sick of spending the supper money on calls to other people.

And what the hell is this 'Anonymous' 'how many peope read your blog?' bullshit?

Sign your effing name if you make a comment on my blog you mingy bastard.

All Queenie has to talk to tonight is Lady Moonbeam.

You can tell, can't you!

I'm going to bed now.
Yous can all fuck off.
Goodnight.

G'wan ya mad t'ing ya, Hugo!

Hugo the Boliverian Dragon Slayer has a liddel pop at Dubya the Devil today in the UN Assembly.


http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoChannel.aspx?storyid=410b4a1c3482483d2596efaf5e0b930fd1e4fb68

Understanding rural Nova Scotia

Apparently I never really will.

Ha, you puny mortals! I have studied under the great Kavanagh. I understand everything!


Epic
by Patrick Kavanagh

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Love is blind

This is on the newswire this afternoon:

Forty-three-year old Mark Brian Harshbarger of Pennsylvania has been identified as the man who was accidentally shot during a hunting trip in central Newfoundland.

R-C-M-P initially reported his wife apparently mistook him for a bear.

The incident happened last Thursday night near Buchan's Junction. The hunting party also included two children and a guide. (VOCM)

Harvest full moon on Long Island

More about the Beta move

As I said before, I've moved over to Beta. It involves a lot of administrative work, which is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means you don't have to be creative if you don't want to. On the other hand, it is grindingly boring when it involves a lot of click and point and click again on the laptop.

Also, my aching wrist/ elbow/ shoulder joints which are getting really bad again are not able for more than an hour of tagging old posts. And then typing for another thirty minutes is out of the question.

But I have 150 posts done.

I'd have more done, but I keep stopping to read old posts.

I was quite witty and interesting for a while back last winter wasn't I?

I wonder what happened to me?

le's have a liddel look at what we is blogging about...

Politics (47)
Work (30)

AHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Methinks.

All the same, 24 themes is pretty good. Well rounded.

Scatty probably. Not able to settle on anything as usual.

I'm reading a very strange book at the moment.

Little Chapel on the River, by Gwendolyn Bounds.

It's strange for a number of reasons.

It's about a woman who had a very high flying career as a journalist with the Wall St. Journal. Admittedly she was the fashion correspondent, but fashion is big business and she had the designer clothes/ girlfriend/ apartment on Wall St./ hectic glamorous lifestyle us over-achieving thirty somethings aspire to.

Then 9/11 happened and she took stock.

She was out house-hunting north of New York, her apartment having been very badly damaged by the explosions, and happened upon a little town called Garrison Landing, in which there is a pub run by a man called Jim Guinan, who used to live beside the golf course in Springtown, which is of course my hometown.

And he reminds me of someone in the photos of him that scatter the book.

And the pub sounds just like my favourite pub ever, Smoothies (moment with head bowed in memory of Smoothies and all its memories), just a little bar below the house, with flexible opening hours and a laconic owner.

So she fell in love with the pub and the family that ran it, and the people who drank in it, and the town in which it was situated, and all of that, and moved to Garrison Landing and took a leave of absence from her job to work in the pub.

Which is of course what I did a year and a half ago, except the job in the pub never quite materialised. And I had nothing that I had fallen in love with apart from an idea of a place which turned out to be wrong, but in a good way.

And the book is structured very like my blog. A bit of narrative about my life. Some pen pictures of other people. Snippets of introspection and memories. Descriptions of the surrounding countryside.

No politics but. Just the occasional mention of Donatella. Or Tommy. Or other random rich people.

And a severe case of the attachments to a manky old camp that she spent summers in at an impressionable age. the fact that she was nine and I am thirty six is irrelevant.

So the parallels exist but are a bit bendy, not truly straight as parallels should be.

The existence of which mean that I have many emotions concerning this book and the woman who wrote it.

Firstly, the emotion I always have when I read a book.

Someone sat down and wrote this. So why don't I? Because I'm a lazy cow, that's why.

This one is getting annoying and is what stopped me reading before so I have to just get through it and get over myself as someone would say.

Secondly, a kind of patronising pity - if she were Irish, she would have been able to blend the glamorous life with having a nice little local. I mean, look at Bertie! Or Bono!

Thirdly, a kind of vicious hatred masquerading as pity. Effing Yank! She was ar muin na muice (I'm taking the piss here now because she keeps quoting 'charming Gaelic phrases' that Jim Guinan taught her), on the pig's back with her nice life and then it all went awfully wrong when her apartment was in the line of disaster from the Twin Towers destruction. And I'm halfway through and she still hasn't mentioned the fact that they brought it on themselves.

Fourthly, huge shame: why am being so uncharitable about what appears to be a thoughtful intelligent woman who has used the tragedy of 9/11 to figure out what is important in life?

WHICH ACTIVITY I TRY TO ENGAGE IN CONSTANTLY AND CONSEQUENTLY SHOULD ADMIRE IN OTHERS.

If I was to be brutally honest, I suppose the vicious hatred masquerading as pity is just jealousy.

Fifthly, a kind of smugness: I have done the same as her (changed my life to figure out what the important stuff is) and I haven't felt the need to write a book about it. And get an agent and get it published and write a gushy acknowledgement to just about everyone on the planet.

Sixthly - well you can imagine - a blog is just a book without a plot or an editor now isn't it, yes sirree bob, so get off your high horse MADAM.

More shame, in other words.

Maybe if I apologise to the woman I will be able to get over myself and finish the book and get over myself.

Sorry, Gwendolyn. I am enjoying the book despite my horrid little black soul.

Books I've read since March... that I can remember

More reviews - this time of books

The Colony of Unrequited Love
and
The Navigator of New York
By Wayne Johnston

An election co-worker got me onto Wayne Johnston. A great writer from Newfoundland. Colony is the story of Joey Smallwood, the Liberal Premier who brought Newfieland into Confederation after the Second World War.

Great book.

Joey Smallwood was a relentless little bastard who tried to make his name by organising the rail workers and fishermen of Nova Scotia. By walking or sailing around Newfoundland in the snow. He didn’t do so well on the left but the Liberals spotted his potential and made him their whipping boy and eventually he got the Premiership.

Mostly the book is the tragedy that was his personal life – his alcoholic father, his unrequited love for the journalist Fielding, who delighted in tormenting him and whose hilarious History of Newfoundland a satirical look at the history of The Rock interspaces the fictionalised biography.

The Navigator is more fiction, but has biographical elements to it. Set in Newfoundland and New York, it is the story of a boy, abandoned by his father who ran off to be a polar explorer, who grew up and went to New York to be a polar explorer. And got in with Peary. Who sounds like a right little bollocks.

Not as good as Colony, but probably just as if you are into polar exploration.

The Delicate Storm
and
Forty Words of Sorrow
By Giles Blunt

My eternal hunt for the new James Lee Burke led me to this crime writer who writes out of Algonquin Bay, northern Ontario, a place I have always wanted to visit, due to its isolation and natural beauty. But it sounds terribly grim in the winter-time. Which is most of the time.

Detective John Cardinal is the same type of tortured soul that Robicheaux et al are, this time it’s money he stole from a crime boss to pay for his daughter’s expensive American education, and a wife with a bad dose of the blues. The crimes are pretty good though, the side-kick is a well-drawn female character and I can see myself following this series for a while.

Other detective novels

Pegasus Descending
By James Lee Burke
And
Hard Revolution
By George Pelecanos

Two of my favourite American crime writers. Pelecanos writes about DC, still mourning the loss of one Eoghan Barry. James Lee Burke writes about Louisiana and the bayou, still mourning the loss of most of New Orleans.

New Orleans gets mentioned. Surprisingly, Eoghan Barry does not. But then again, Hard Revolution is set around the assassination of Martin Luther King, a bit before his time.

So maybe that’s why.

Skin Divers
By Anne Michaels

I was blown away by her novel Fugitive Pieces a few months back, so I bought a book of her poetry just to see.

We roll over the edge into the deep field
Rise from under the rain,
From our shapes in the wet grass
Night swimmers, skin divers.

Very nice it is too to be reading poetry again. This is a book of love poetry and in the third section, usually the most innovative in your average book of poetry, Michaels takes on the personae of Marie Curie and Kathleen Scott and imagines their emotional state after the deaths of their spouses.

Did you know that when Scott was dying, he crossed out the word wife, which was on the inscription - ‘give this to my wife’ printed on the front of his diary and wrote ‘widow’ instead?

Bad Land
By Jonathan Raban

A history of the badlands, by the second best travel writer in the world – the best being Colin Thubron. Haven’t finished it yet, but it’s great so far – organised thematically as well as chronologically – Fences, Pictures, Heavy Weather, Clinging to the Wreckage – stuff like that. He captures the mournful emptiness brilliantly and following on Keepers of Truth, gave me some idea of what it would be like to live in Manitoba, which is why I didn’t want to move there.

Keepers of Truth
By Michael Collins

This guy is Irish apparently. I’ve never heard of him. Keepers was shortlisted for the 2000 Booker Prize, but I’ve never heard of it. I must have been out the day they announced it that year.

Again, annoyingly, this was in the Literature section of Doulls and not in the Irish literature section. I was about to move it as I always do (some day I will get caught doing this and barred from the shop forever) but I decided to buy it instead.

Wasn't I the lucky girl!

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a rant about the destruction of Middle America and I’d love to hear his take on things now that Bush and the Neo-Cons have swept the boards in that part of the world.

Bill, the narrator is the sub-editor on a small town newspaper in a once-prosperous manufacturing town. He gets caught up in a murder he’s reporting on with disastrous results. The characters and their over-intense interaction are well drawn and he has a great eye for the American media and the nuances of a small town and their intersection in the modern world.

Saving the World
By Julia Alvarez

My birthday book.

A story within a story. Author Alma Huebner is caught in writer’s block and ambivalent about her husband’s trip to the Dominican Republic to run an environmental project. She loses herself in the story of Isabel Sendales y Gomez, the head of a Spanish orphanage who, by chance, ends up accompanying the first expedition to bring the smallpox vaccine to the New World. Lots of story in a story parallels about the joys of being in love with an obsessive man and a ripping good story – two stories in fact – that intertwine very well. This woman is an Allendes who knows how to structure a story without making her protagonist fly when necessary.

Ta very much Mrs. Monkey.

Albums I've bought since March

Time for some reviews I think.

Sleator-Kinney: The Woods
The brilliance of this album was driven home to me when it was nicked from the car by one of the teenage boy wonders only four days after I bought it. Usually it takes a couple of weeks for the sound to percolate through his curly mop, grown to hide his seventeen year old face from the rest of the world.

Thankfully I had uploaded it. I need say no more, it has all been said by people more qualified than me to talk about grinding guitars and screaming bass lines.

Precisely, it should have been the other way round.

Corinne Bailey-Rae: Corinne Bailey-Rae
Just Like a Star is a great love song. I like this album like I like my pink suede stiletto boots, because I bought it on the basis of a review and often that’s a bit hit and miss (unless it’s Franks of course). And just like my pink suede stiletto boots, it turned out to be totally me once I got it home.

I believe it’s being uber-hyped across the pond. Over here, it made a little splash, but nothing much, too soft for the R ‘n’ B sistas in Halifax, too girlie for the boys, too English for the Yankified. Just right for this girl.

Bruce Springsteen: The Seeger Sessions
Well, you knew I was going to buy this one didn’t you. Mweh… I do like the idea of it very much, and it is great for round a campfire when you’re getting the beers into you and the fire going, but it gets on my nerves after a while. Plus I can’t upload it as the cd/dvd thingummy setup it’s on won’t fit in my cd-rom.

Mundy: Live and Confusion
Somebody sent me this for my birthday. Again it’s a cd/dvd combo disc so I can’t upload it which means I don’t play it very often, as I don’t have a car anymore.

Keane: Under the Iron Sky
U2. Joshua Tree. Updated only slightly.

I feel old now.

It’s very whingey. And I believe Chaplin’s gone for a little rest in the Priory, so maybe the rest of them are getting a break now. But there are lyrics like:

Sometimes I get to feeling that I’m stranded in the wrong town…Is it any wonder that I’m tired/ Is it any wonder that I’m uptight

Bless him. He should try being sent to Glace Bay Nova Scotia for an election campaign.

When are the people who invent formats on computers going to invent something additional to Bold, Italics and underline.

The album’ll do for a Thursday night listen with a glass of wine and an absorbing task though.

Sam the Record Man: Halifax Indie Sampler 2006
Terry, my main man in Sam’s (who sells me my medicine, as he says) made me buy this the other day. It was only six bucks though. I’m just popping it on now, so I’ll go onto books and come back to this when I’ve had a listen.

I’ve had a listen. That was a bit of a letdown. Not as good as Ian’s magic Ireland mix. Honestly, I didn't like one song on it and the production values were crap.

NOT WORTH SIX BUCKS EVEN.

Condi was here today

I suppose I'd better do the 9/11 thing. No disrespect to anyone who was affected badly by it, but better people than I can mark the occasion.

Condoleeza Rice marked the occasion by coming to Halifax, Nova Scotia to thank us all for putting up all the stranded air travellers when their planes were diverted from US airspace after the Twin Towers attack.

I'm suprised she kept a straight face while she was doing it.

Several times over the last few days, I have button-holed a Canadian and said the following:

So the Yanks diverted all the flights north to Canada after the Twin Tower attacks, eh?

Yes, they would say, all proud that they did their bit to save the free world from Terrorism again.

I would crack up laughing then, pointing and saying succccckkkkkkkkkkkerrrsss!

Time would pass.

The small sound of a Canadian penny dropping would be heard somewhere in their head.

Facial muscles would contort slowly as the mood changed from calm pride to wounded pride.

Eventually.... Those cocksuckers!!!!

Everytime... I swear it happened everytime I did it.

Granted, I mostly did it to people who don't really care about politics, but this is 9/11 we are talking about.

Seriously, there are 33 million LOVELY people up here in Canuckstan, who would mostly do anything for their neighbours, be they Yanks or whoever, who are being buttfucked by the Americans, with the assistance of their own government of course, and only 57 of them turned up to tell that 'disgrace to her gender' neo-cow to go home today.

And I wasn't one of them.

I must be growing up finally.

Anyways, the day that will never be the same again has come and gone again.

Jersey Girl in the Ovens with Travel Chests - Part II

So I had left off at the glimmering.

Anyways, the trunks turned out to be dead handy, in several ways:

- we sat on them around the campfire;

- we used them to block the not inconsiderable wind blowing up the east coast of America towards us that night as we camped;

- we piled all the camping stuff in them and strapped them to the roof of the car, and that is the only way we got all of the gear back up to Halifax;

- we packed everything in them to move to the new apartment;

- they provide useful end table, chest of drawers and table functions which means Queenie and Himself don't have to spend any more money on furniture than they absolutely have to (both of them having more than one set of furniture already, more seems like a stupid idea - it's one thing to have ninety pairs of shoes scattered across the western world, it's completely different to have ninety end tables.

Anyways, our night camping was great fun, if a little windy. We went down to the Chapin's family campsite family restaurant and bar, where we happened upon the Chapin Family Annual Get Together, which was why the campground was packed, this being an annual highlight of the Nova Scotia folk music calendar.

Queenie is very glad she didn't grow up loving the Nova Scotia folk music scene as she would have been a very sad (anorak sad) girl.

There was a grown man who had driven all the way from New Jersey to volunteer as a photographer at the event. He never missed one, he told me.

After just one or two songs we skedaddled out of the restaurant and left the table for REAL fans, bought some firewood (Himself was not too impressed with the need to pay for wood seeing as we were surrounded by the stuff) and lit a fire to see our beers by.

And talked about politics and the environment.

You know you have the right boyfriend when he and your friend's boyfriend can sit around agreeing that come the Apocalypse the world would be a better place due to the absence of nasty machinary and combustion engines (BH) and modernity in general (Himself).

Except for no more Anthropologie, I thought to myself but didn't verbalise it because it wasn't in the spirit of the evening and also because I was fairly sure Jersey Girl would be thinking the same thought, so I didn't need to.

After a few beers of that kind of talk it of course morphed into 'how can we speed up the apocalypse'. I think Himself was all for heading to the Albertan oil pipeline with a chainsaw and a vice grip, but I can't really remember for sure.

We managed to stop him from heading off right that night, so he went and got some more wood instead. Thankfully, he didn't burn any of the signs saying 'do not gather wood, not even dead wood - you will be fined and thrown out of Chapin's Happy Camping Place'. That would have been too cheeky. Instead he just cleared up a bit of brush and other bits and pieces, in an environmentally responsible way that was unfortunately highly unprofitable for the Chapins.

But there are some Canadians who think that the trees are for everyone.

Later that night after the moon came out and the stars were glowing really brightly, as if they were down in our atmosphere checking on the progress of the apocalypse, we went to bed. A couple of hours later I woke to find my face buried in the side of the tent, through which a storm force wind was blowing the canvass against my mouth.

bzrbzrbzrbzzrbzrbzrbzr.........bwbwwbwbwbwww.....

I can't really describe the sound properly.

I tried to move, but I was pinned. Himself was cold, so he had burrowed up against my back and wasn't for moving. Eventually I managed to wake him up, shivering in his sleep as he was.

He had brought the wrong sleeping bag.

He had to get up and put all his clothes on and then go back to sleep.

But it was dawn at that stage, so not a great night's sleep really. Some nights camping are like that.

This blog's gone Beta

So I was talking to one of my uber-techie friends tonight by the miracle of Google Chat, and I said the blog was going Beta and he asked what that meant.

As if Queenie would effing know!!

What it boils down to is lots and lots of new gadgets to play with on the blog and the introduction of tags, which I have wanted for ever and ever, but could not figure out the HTML for, despite several patient coaching sessions from friends who have more time than sense. (in terms of dealing with my facility with HTML).

But now I get to label my posts.

Those of you who know me know that I LOVE to label things.

I should have been a Victorian botanist.

So that's a job for all the boring afternoons in the office when I should be reading some mind-numbingly boring energy sector report on effing wind turbines or solar panels or demand side management or some other yaaawwwwwn (I mean why don't they just do what the Germans did and build the effing things and clean up the air) subject. Instead of just sitting there reading the yawnathing, I can sit there and half read it and glance longingly over at the computer.

And dream of tags.

Summer's over.

Blog's gone Beta.

Back in a mo'.

Zine guilt

is a terrible thing. Have to write my zine tonight.

Bah!

Jersey Girl in the Ovens with Travel Chests - Part I

The summer is nearly over. The last two days have been horribly cold, for August, and although it is to warm up again for the weekend when we are going CAMPING at the beautiful lake where Himself planted me a rose garden on the lakeside in front of my tent last summer (thus scoring himself an Irish woman forever, poor lad) September will be bitter sweet. Although not as bad as last year, when I totally spoiled the beautiful weather that Nova Scotia gets in that month by worrying about the impending winter.

Not realising that the winter wouldn’t arrive until mid-December.

At least I know what the winter will be like now.

Although last winter was a ‘good’ one.

Thinks about that for a while… shudders… decides not to think about it until November.

Anyways, the summer. I got caught up in domestic stuff recently and left off describing the summer of visitors. I had done the Queen Parents pretty much, and half of Polly’s visit, in other words her weekend in Bear Cove, after which we piled everything and everyone back into the car and came back to Halifax, so Polly could have some of the bright lights of the city.

Of course she had just come from New York, so they were a bit mweh, I’m sure, but she seemed to have enjoyed herself nonetheless. After we all summoned the energy to go out again, which took a few days.

Then it was the weekend all of a sudden again and time to bring her to the airport.

I hate that damned airport. I spend too much time in it crying and not enough being a happy Queenie.

Himself and I had to go down the South Shore then, to meet Jersey Girl and her BH (beloved husband), who had been cycling towards Halifax from Yarmouth all week. They had gotten as far as The Ovens, which was a good bit of the way, so Himself and I only had about ninety minutes drive ahead of us.

I spent most of it wondering how we were going to get JG&BH’s bikes and camping gear in the back of the car, which was already stuffed with our camping gear.

We were past Lunenburg and heading down the last part of the journey when we saw a sign for a yard sale and a lot of interesting stuff in a garden. We sidelonged each other, but nobody gave anybody the nod and we kept driving. After about a mile, Himself slowed down and said ‘I really wanted to go to that yard sale’.

So did I.

We did a quick U-turn and sped back, in case all the bargains were gone.

First thing I saw were three enormous travel trunks; the old square-lidded ones with the brass bindings. One of them was in pretty poor shape with paint on it, but it can be removed and the other two were fine. Two were marked $50 and $40. The smallest of the three wasn’t priced.

I wondered whether it would be totally insane to get the smallest one. I could put some of the camping gear in it I reasoned. So I asked how much.

Fifty bucks for the three of them, the guy said. He was moving to Saskatchewan to be near his grandchildren.

I’ll take them, the insane person who takes over Queenie’s body occasionally had her wallet out before Queenie could say ‘what about the biiiiikes?’

Well, didn’t Himself and I have some fun then, playing our own personal version of The Krypton Factor (note to Canadians – TKF is a long-defunct, but pretty high end game show on UK tv, which tested physical and intellectual endurance, with one round of spatial awareness challenges that I could never figure out).

"This evening’s challenge is to fit these three trunks into an already full Chevrolet Equinox. Which is not a small car."

Eventually Himself, who is genius at stuff like this, put the smallest trunk into the biggest, put all the camping gear into the mid-sized trunk, which is my favourite, and finally got them into the car.

One of them had to be put on the back seat, though.

Finally we got to The Ovens camping site and eventually we found JG&BH’s campsite despite the owners of the site telling me they weren’t there over and over for a half an hour, while I freaked out completely thinking they’d been eaten by a bear or something, and as we were putting up the tent at the site, I looked up and there they were walking towards us!

Hooray! And not a bear scratch on either of them!

We explained about the trunks, which were now unpacked and lying on the campsite. JG didn’t say anything but she had that glimmer behind her eyes she gets when she thinks I’m on one of my little trips down crazy lane.

The apple never falls far from the tree.

Her mother used to spend Saturday mornings years ago trying to teach me (and some other teenage girls) how to play golf, and would give me the exact same look when I’d be trying to explain why it took me 112 shots to get round the back nine.

No wonder JG is a CEO of an organisation, and I’m not.

I must cultivate a glimmer sometime.

Actually, I should just adopt the apple/tree analogy I was using earlier and just inherit the Queen Mother’s. It’s pretty ferocious when it wants to be.

Anyways, enough about glimmering, back to the story…

Himself calls at this point for a chat. Chatting ensues. Time passes. The humour for writing is off me now.

… except it’s late and my hands are sore today from typing, so I’ll go to bed and finish this tomorrow.

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

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

No visitors from anywhere.

No packing to do.

No furniture to find.

Apart from a table and chairs.

But they’ll happen someday.

Of that I have no doubt.

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

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

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

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

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

What????

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

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

Why a golf bag?

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

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

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

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

Sigh…

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

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

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

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

I have learned two things this week.

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

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

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

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

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

Although the apartment is a little nicer than his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living the dream, eh?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I got talking about myself. as usual.

Tomorrow.

I promise.

It was to have been the second last night in the little yellow house...

This should have been posted on Friday night, but the lack of internet access in my new apartment has meant it is late.

It’s funny how everything always turns out exactly the opposite to what I have planned these days, but it’s generally okay anyways.

This was to be my second last night in the little yellow house on the tree-lined street, beside the Montreal train line, at the edge of the peninsula, beside the sea, close to the university, where the first year in Canada took place.

I was to have two more nights in this gorgeous little house that took me in a year ago and got me through my first Nova Scotian winter.

I had it all planned in my head.
Had it visualised.
Saw myself doing it.

Himself had other ideas of course.

I had gotten rid of him for the weekend. He was gone back to the island with the children, who were wonderful if a little tiring for a girl who’s not used to children.

I was going to chill out Friday night, and by chill out, I mean sit and have a few drinks and blog and worry about the packing in the morning, because I’m going to be a bitch tomorrow, because Lady Moonbeam has announced her imminent arrival in the form of a low, grinding pain in my abdomen. So I was going to slowly drink everything left in the house to dull that ache, and then wake up with a hangover, and three ‘drunken landlady and her friends’ people in the house to deal with, and I was going to finish the packing.

But it was okay, because it was a challenge, and then I was going to go over to the new place, and wait for my super deluxe king-size Sears-O-Pedic bed to arrive, which I got for one third of the price for some strange reason, and then I was going to think about going out for a long time before hitting the shower/ clothes/ make up routine I haven’t engaged in for about four months, and head out with Hotspur, the Goddess of Spin.

For one of our evenings.

Because her man will have gone back to Maine for his university course. And she’ll be feeling a bit lost.

So I had gotten home and dealt with the ‘excited because she was soon to be drunk with her best mates’ landlady I had found sitting in my living room (her friend was over from Ottawa and they were staying here tonight to see could the landlady possibly live here for tax reasons for a year – of course, I thought, it’s the most beautiful house in the world – I do love my landlady, I have a bastard landlord now… but he has an Irish peasant which is probably worse) and I was sitting upstairs listening to my new Keane album and contemplating the packing (in other words the evening) when I got a text from Himself.

It said:

What are you doing
were coming up
tonight tiny martin I
help ya cleen going
on tear tomorrow
night
5.38pm 25/8/06

Even I, with my miraculous powers of understanding Himself’s texts, was baffled by this.

So I called him.

So Himself and Martin and Tina are coming up to move me into the new flat tonight and help me clean both houses tomorrow and then we’re going to Tammy’s sister’s fortieth in Kentville tomorrow night.

Whatever about Tammy’s sister’s fortieth, which I’d rather not go to it being in Kentville which is miles away, I saw the plan for what it was.

My last night in this house was Thursday night.

So the year in Canada will be over in about an hour.

It was a little more than a year of course.

But this is the last night.

I can feel it.

So I packed like a mad one for about an hour.

And now I am sitting on the smallest deck in the world for the last time drinking a raspberry swirl cooler I acquired at some bonfire this summer, and all the last bits of me in this house are packed and ready to go.

Except for the laptop of course.

I have finished the bottle of wine and all that’s left to drink before Himself arrives to find me drunk and maudlin is the leftovers of the bottle of sloe gin I got from the Queen Dad at Christmas.

That should do it.

The new bottle is in the new apartment.

You gotta reward yourself for change.

So I sat on the deck and looked at my trees, each one of which I know so well now, and listened for the last time, and looked at the golden light on the trees, which are thinking about turning now it’s nearly September, and thought about all the times that I sat here and whom I sat with and all the people who never sat here but whom I thought about while I did, whether thinking about them made me sad or happy or both.

Then the jays landed in their various gardens and screeched at each other for about an hour. They’re black and white and they scurry up and down the branches like they can’t fly, occasionally taking off like helicopters to gain a bit of height. I think there are three of them. The one in my garden hops from tree to tree so I suppose he/ she is marking out its territory.

I love to listen to their screeches. And imagine what they’re saying to each other.

How was your day, honey?

Disastrous! Thanks for asking but. I totally fucked up on that final part of the presentation.

Then the squirrels started up and nibbled at each other in a high-pitched tone for a bit. Clarence the tree surgeon came by a couple of weeks ago, when Polly was here, and took down their two favourite trees. So they had to move too.

I felt so bad for them, knowing as I do how traumatic change is.

Now it’s just the crows. Everything else is asleep as it’s almost dark. Except for the crickets are starting up.

They only arrive here in August. Do they sleep for eleven months of the year?

Their relations in the Mediterranean must think they’re crazy, moving to Canada.

Anyways, Himself will be here in less than an hour, with our friends, to move me into my second year in Canada.

How lucky I am to have such wonderful people to move me.

How I wish all the wonderful people in my life could meet each other, under my benevolent eye.

(yes, yes, I know I’m a control freak)

Is that why people get married?

I have always assumed it was so.

I have a sneaking suspicion some people do it for the presents.

But you can always tell those people, can’t you!

When I get married you will all have to bring a sleeping bag.

It’s up to you whether you buy one in the autumn sales.

Oh! There’s the first bat of the evening!

Talk to you soon, boys and girls.

What mythological creature are you?

I went to see the Chimera the last time I was in Turkey, and very beautiful it was too.

Here's another personality test from Myles' blog.

You Are a Chimera

You are very outgoing and well connected to many people.Incredibly devoted to your family and friends, you find purpose in nurturing others.You are rarely alone, and you do best in the company of others.You are incredibly expressive, and people are sometimes overwhelmed by your strong emotions.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Anti-terrorism restrictions designed by men

Great.

Now if Queenie wants to fly somewhere, which she doesn't think she'll be doing anytime soon due to the awfulness of the security measures now, but if she does, and she has her period, she will be forced to walk around the airport before she boards with all her tampons in a see-through plastic bag.

In case she's a terrorist.

This society is becoming more and more of a nut job every day.

Whereupon nature conspires to make everything perfect

So, the Queen Parents left last Monday, which is why Queenie was upset in her last post (for those of you who are NOT PAYING ATTENTION closely enough due to the having of lives of your own), and last Friday Polly arrived for a little visit.

It was great. We went to the airport and Queenie jumped up and down in a fit for half an hour while the planeload moved slowly through Customs, and eventually Himself got Queenie sat down and calmed down a little, and of course as soon as he did the door opened and there was Polly. Much screaming and yakking ensued until eventually everyone was very tired and had to go to bed around two.

Next morning, after some blueberry pancakes and maple syrup, and an hour’s chaotic packing, Queenie and Himself brought Polly down to the island for a weekend’s camping, it being the Natal Day holiday in Nova Scotia.

And Shazz and her boy, who were making their first trip to the island, came too. Five people, five tall people, all their tents and sleeping bags and camping gear, plus all the food and all the drink, plus all the clothes and hats and coats, in one 4WD. We just about all fit in.

We got down to the island and unloaded all the gear and it was only then that the other passengers in the car realised that the cove where we were camping was quite a ways on foot down a rocky track from the car park. We let Shazz’ son spend a minute freaking out about it before we told him that Himself had transportation organised so while he went off to get his lot and to organise everything, we brought enough stuff to pitch our tents and make a cup of tea.

Everything except the propane and the water of course. Queenie always forgets something. So she had to hike back for those.

Anyways, we got to the cove, which I’ve written about before and which is quite the nicest place in the world bar none, and the first thing that happens is that a little minke whale buzzes into the cove for a blow and a breather. She came in every day we were there at the same time. So we’re standing on the flat green ridge above the cove that is perfect for camping, looking down at the beautiful rock formations that tumble along the shore, with the blue, blue sea twinkling and pushing gently against the rocks under the hot August sun, just admiring the beauty of the cloudless day, when we hear bbbsssccchhhh!!!

(Queenie’s version of a blow, doncha know).

WHALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I screamed. And there she was, a smooth black shadow gliding through the water.

I thought Polly was going to burst she was so thrilled.

And that was the weekend for us pretty much. If I had sat down to write a story about the perfect weekend for a girl from Ireland to experience on the island, I would probably have left some of it out as being too OTT.

It would have been perfect weather until just after we left. And so it was. We had two days of hot hot sunshine, and when we woke up on the third morning, the wind had changed and was blowing hard enough to make dismantling the tents a bit of a challenge. By the time we got back to Halifax we were in the middle of one of Nova Scotia’s extreme summer storms.

Each night, as we barbecued our steaks and chicken, dusk would have stolen gently over the outgoing tide and a bulbous golden harvest moon would have risen over the ridge and slung itself lowly, slowly across a cloudless night sky, spattered with stars.

And so it was.

The first night, our good friends would have made their way down to camp on the shore with us, and all the children would have disappeared over the ridge to do whatever kids do on the shore, while us grown ups had a few beers and lit the bonfire and watched the seals coming in all nosy to investigate what the kids were up to.

Then later everyone would sit on the beach and watch the fire and laugh at the men and boys as they fed the fire and undertook those strange rituals that men have when they’re engaging in something as primordial as making heat from driftwood to keep everyone warm on an island shore

And so it was.

Polly would have had toasted marshmallows and wieners to roast over the fire (not too primordial), and lots of local boys to chat to, as well as getting to meet all the local women Queenie has met through Himself, who are just like the women at home in Springtown where Polly and Queenie are from.

And so it was.

Next day the sun glared down on us, so Shazz made an Ottoman-style tent with four tree branches and a fly leaf (red), and we lay under it and talked for hours while Himself brought the kids swimming in the swimming hole further up the track. Then we emerged from the woods for a barbeque at Tee’s house before heading back for another bonfire under the perfect moon, where Polly sang old Irish songs that made people want to cry (because the songs were sad, doncha know, Polly’s a good singer).

Then everyone went to bed and Polly and Queenie sat by the fire for a while and told each other all the things in their hearts that they hadn’t been able to tell each other for ages, what with having to be on opposite sides of the ocean for ever such a long time.

Queenie’s very glad she didn’t have to make the weekend up; that it just happened the way it did. We all deserve a perfect weekend once in a while.

Whereupon the reader hears about the quietness

It’s very quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

But I was one of the minor characters.

Very unnerving, I can tell you.

Thank goodness I have a blog.

What would I do otherwise?

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

I’d get a different look when that happened.

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

I wonder what mine is like?

Some time is spent thinking about this.

I’m probably just pretty verbal.

I just wrote my first stage direction!

Some time is spent thinking about this.

There’s no effing money in theatre.

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

I wonder how he did that?

Some time is spent thinking about this.

Nah, don’t know. Time to move on.

Time passes.

Beckett was rich too, of course.

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

I kid you not.

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

I feel better now.

Even just remembering is making it less painful.

The quietness.

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

Sorry reader, I couldn’t resist that.

Goodnight. Safe home.

All of you.

So many restaurants, so little time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Domestic Bliss on Beaufort

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

Then we had mangoes and ice cream.

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

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

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

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

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

Spoilsport.

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

This is why I came to Canada.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whereupon the narrator gets comfortable...

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

I think it’s a mafia society.

Canada I mean.

Real old style garotte from behind mafia culture.

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

Somewhere really vicious.

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

Wife-beating. And murder. And drug dealing.

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

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

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

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

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

Corporals January, February and March.

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

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

And soldiers don't, do they?

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

And they're very fond of their local headbangers.

In the Irish sense of the phrase.

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

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

I think that might be the problem here.

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

Or revert to, I should say.

But it exists anyway.

That sense of affinity with others of your kind.

And it’s getting stronger.

Why are we all starting to mass into tribes again?

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

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

Or maybe we sound like a flock of birds.

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

What do I sound like to a sparrow?

Or a blade of grass?

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

Dear Reader,

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

I love those kinds of books.

Dear Reader means:

Sit down, girl.

Why?

I’m going to tell you a story.

Really?

Oh yes.

Then Dear Reader would perk right up and say:

Fantastic, let me get comfortable.

Time would pass.
Pasta is cooked.

Eventually Reader would resurface with a bag of stuff

…. Have I got everything?

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

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

I would.

Anyways, back to the sparrow…