Mags' an Auld Dog

Mags, 40, is an Irish woman who lives in New Jersey and leads the state's conservation agency. She is an environmentalist, political activist, triathlete and book collector (bio and pic by Q).

If you live your life for someone else's approval, you're not living your life and you're not going to get approval.

I envy selfish people and people who are certain. I worry too much to have certainty and empathize too much to be truly selfish. Although I am working on being selfish - it's my current self-improvement project!

Getting ahead is about timing - being in the right place at the right time having laid the right foundation in preparation for that timing.

Money is the root of all evil. In any and all situations that elicit a painful wail of "Why?" from a puzzled populace, the answer generally lies at the end of the money trail.

My genes dictate that I am prompt, organized and ever so slightly anal. I've lost the fight with my genes and have surrendered to my promptness, organization and anal nature! I am turning into my mother and I no longer mind.

It is impossible to be good, to be truly good and think good thoughts and do good all the time…you need to cut yourself some slack every now and again.

Animals are much cleverer in certain ways than humans. Birds can navigate 3,000-mile migration paths year in and year out, timing their arrivals with emergent food sources and their departures with the tiniest temperature trend changes. They don't have compasses or thermometers or maps. Snakes will take the shortest route, a straight line, between their hibernacula and their traditional breeding areas and they don't have GPS to help them.

I don't think humans are inherently bad, but I do think that a few bad humans give the rest of us a reputation we don't deserve and mess things up royally for those of us who seek to tread lightly on this planet. I think a lot of people believe in god because they can't believe in humanity. I think if we could all seek and find our reward in this life, rather than expecting it in the next, the world would be a much better place in a much better state.

When I am being strong and assertive, I think people think that I'm being bitchy. If I was a man being strong and assertive would they consider me macho? Sometimes I have to flirt to get what I want in work…in fact I just flirted my way into a $15,000 sponsorship deal for my big fundraiser. It annoys me that men don't have to flirt!

I think books are the best things about being alive. I think I prefer books to anything in the entire world and if I was to be stranded on a desert island and they offered me a choice between company or books, I would take books every time.

Finally, I get happier as I get older and I remain surprised at that fact and annoyed that nobody told me that was going to happen. Or maybe they did once and I just didn't believe it then!

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog that provides the pearls of wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you would like to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 words to auld.dog@gmail.com along with a bio and picture (or I'll do them) and I'll post it here.

Happy Birthday Percy!

Percy's Two today. As in two years old. As in this blog.

Probably not a party, but maybe a post later, if I can wrestle the computer away from job hunters and MSN-ers.

Happy Birthday Percy - Queenie

Saved by the shopping

This Auld Dog lark is great. For a number of reasons.

I don’t have half as much blog guilt since it started.

Looking into other people’s heads is sooo much fun, isn’t it!

Seeing what’s inside their head is pretty interesting too. For me anyways.

Watching who steps up the plate is pretty nifty too.

Anyways, there’s three more this weekend. I was going to space them out and then I thought, nah, Auld Dog’s are like birds at a feeder, doesn’t matter how many are there – you can stand and watch all day.

Speaking of stepping up to the plate, someone who did suggested I might write about my holiday in Ireland.

I’m still thinking about it… and now the shopping’s arrived, so I gotta go for a while.

Luke's an Auld Dog

Luke, nearly 35, lives in Dublin, works in tv land, and generally has more than enough side projects to keep him busy (bio by Q).

I used to want to live in the future when I was a kid. Maybe it was because at the time, the present was the 1980s. Maybe it was because I was a geeky kid with braces on my teeth and I felt things had to get better than watching my brothers kick ass on the rugby pitch and studying trigonometry for the Inter Cert. Well, things did better. And now I feel like I do live in the future. Though there's a distinct lack of jet-packs to get to work and silvery androids to do the hoovering, it's actually pretty good. This internet thing is deadly. This country is no longer full of mad bombers and psychopaths (well actually it is, but they do considerably less mad bombing than they used to). Flying to Paris for €20 is pretty good too.

From what I can tell, talent is not the most important thing if you want to get somewhere in life. There are two things you need if you want to succeed - luck and desire.

Experts on the TV are not experts. They are people who are willing to go on the TV. Most real experts couldn't be bothered.

I must have had ten different beards at this stage. I worry that this is a sign of confusion about myself.

I worry a lot. At least, I am today as I'm writing this. In fact I'm worried what people reading this will think. But not enough to not post it. You could call this neurotic narcissism I suppose.

Some days I'm just carried along on an unstoppable wave of positivity, possibilities, bonhomie and bad jokes. Today is not one of those days. By the way, the word positivity is not in the Microsoft Word dictionary. Figures.

It seems to be the done thing to give your opinion about the world in this Auld Dog yoke, but I don't really feel I have anything interesting to say. And when it comes to global affairs I'm beginning to prefer people who have interesting opinions rather than correct ones.

Speaking of which, is George Bush so bad? I can't help thinking he's probably not, but he is surrounded by people who are genuinely evil.

I keep talking about moving to London. I've been doing it for five years and I still haven't gone.

I love blogs but I couldn't be bothered to have one myself.

It never ceases to amaze me how little logic I apply to the various situations and challenges that I come across in life and how difficult it is to get any perspective on them.

I'd like to punch Ricky Gervaise in his Ricky Ger-Face. (He looks like my mate Gerry BTW. And no, I don't want to punch Gerry's face).

I think one of the big problems with men is that they can't talk to their friends about their emotional difficulties. I think one of the big problems with women is that they can.

I have a terrible habit of trying to get somewhere in my career and then when I get there, to start looking around for something more interesting. And I don't mean the next rung up, I mean the next ladder across. It's like a sort of lateral ambition. Lambition?

Is it more important to enjoy life or to leave a lasting legacy? I don't know, but right now I'm tending towards the former.

I distinctly remember the last night of my twenties as crushingly depressing. But once I turned 30 things perked up. I'm 35 this year. Feels like it might be a big deal.

I have a job where I never have to wear a suit. But bizarrely, I end up wearing a "uniform", artfully scruffy clothes that scream "this is the job I do". It's a bit annoying, because I don't remember making a conscious decision about this. It seems to have just happened.

I hate when people tell me they are "trying to write a book/be an artist/make a film." Either do it or shut up about it. By the way, I'm trying to write a book at the moment.

I like my laptop too much. I show it to people who visit my house. It must be so boring for them.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, or I'll write it, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Trish Byrne's an Auld Dog

Trish Byrne, 36, writes abstracts for a living and novels for fun, rescues dogs and cats (and her friends when necessary) and sometimes prefers the age of sail to that of the combustion engine (bio and pic by Q.)

People who talk about the demise of rural pub life in Ireland talk about the smoking ban and, now, random breath testing. But what they don't talk about is the other factor, that for years men went to the pub in the evening, sat there all night, and then waited for their wives (or, indeed, their mammies) to come and fetch them. Since women, even in the Irish countryside, have social lives of their own now, that's not going to happen for them.

I've lived on a housing estate for a large portion of my life, and they are strange places. Everyone has plenty of space, but it's all individualised, and the potential collective bargaining power of the estate never seems to be realised. Why don't we get together and get a communal Tesco delivery, for instance, and reduce our delivery costs? Or a communal pizza delivery at 7.30 on a Thursday night? Or have our own estate-wide broadband network? It's not how estates function, is why not.

Not having any children, the three things that have taken over my life since I became an adult are back pain, dogs, and writing. Back pain in a bad way. When you've got it, that's it, you're incapacitated until it's passed. If you drop a pen or a glove on the ground, forget it, it's gone.

Dogs, well, they're like permanent toddlers, and they thrive on routine. If you don't have a life with at least some routine in it, I recommend you don't get a dog.

And writing, well, I've always done it. I used to think I wanted to be published, but now I think I just enjoy it. Making up stories is fun. Writing a certain number of words in a day is fun. Just getting to the end of the page is fun. Filling up a notebook with your handwriting is satisfying, even if you never read it back. It seems like a strange hobby to people, but I don't really understand why. People run marathons and don't win them. They play in bands that will never have a record contract, they paint pictures or take pictures that aren't for sale, so what's strange about writing novels for fun?

www.accentmonkey.blogspot.com

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, or I'll write it, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Trees in Portumna, Ireland December 2006

People in treehouses shouldn't give out the password

So, Queenie's been a bit lax the last few weeks. Sorry about that. Life has been a bit complicated.

Suffice it to say that the days of coming home from work and lounging around the apartment langorously while dreaming up blog posts are over. For a bit anyways.

Work is as relentless as ever. Even when there are no scandals and no Legislature sittings, which demand a relentless conveyor belt of what my colleague refers to as 'bright, shiny objects' i.e. issues, for the assembled politicians and hangers on, day to day life in the world of oppositional politics still demands a relentless conveyor belt of bright shiny objects for the media.

Plus we had our annual electricity rates bunfight this week, with the power company asking the regulator for a rate increase, and the forces of good rallied against them, and a veritable vulture flock of lawyers going chi-ching, resulting in mounds and mounds and mounds of badly written documentation about coal prices and executive bonuses and why the poorest people in this province have to pay the most for their energy and gas flue desensitisation and blah-di-fucking-blah that Queenie had to plough through to no avail because the power company took the hit before the hearing started in any course....

Here's a thought.

Instead of creating paper and using electricity to write on the pages and send the documentation to a gazzilion people who have better things to do than read them seeing as it appears to be a pointless exercise, why don't we just save a load of time and money and burn the trees in the power stations?

And while I'm on the subject of trees, the ugly issue of the treehouse is rearing its head again.

Treehouses...

When I was nine, the lads on our road built a treehouse and I was never allowed to go into the treehouse because I didn't have the password. I found the whole episode singularly unfair at the time and I suppose it was my first entry into the 'you can't be in our club because you don't have a penis' part of life that DRIVES ME CRACKED and sends me flying into a rage that is so earth shattering that it proves to the boys that it was a good decision not to give me the password.

God knows, I might have torn the treehouse down during one of my pre-menstrual fits!!

One would think that twenty eight years later I would have either figured out the password, or it would have been abolished.

But no.

It's alive and kicking in the twentyfirst century workplace.

The only way to deal with it is to imagine said workmates wearing Just William clothes, including a jaunty school cap perched sideways on their heads, while sitting in a treehouse instead of an office, peering out through the slatted sides with their war paint on, keeping sketch for the other gang, who are planning on making a raid from their clubhouse down the road.

Thinks about that for a second.

That's so like the way it is it's scary.

Thing is, I don't actually want to be in the treehouse. It's cold, it's wet, it's hierarchical, it's boring sitting around waiting for the raid. I'd much rather hang out with the girls and tear their personalities to shreds while we make mud pies for the battle of the treehouse.

I just want to know what they talk about while they're up there. Strategy? Leadership? Tactics?
I should try to tame my nosier shores I suppose. It's just I have a sneaking suspicion they're all in there having a competition to see who can emit the noisiest fart, while us girls are all down at the bottom of the tree making the bright shiny objects that actually win the war in the long run.

Colombo's an Auld Dog

Currently living in Dublin, Ireland, Colombo (not her real name - Q)has more years of technical writing experience than she cares to admit. She is also prone to ringing good friends who live on the other side of the world for rambling philosophical conversations... or sometimes gossip or occasional drunken chitchat.

I dislike New Year's Resolutions and rarely make them. As someone who isn't pushed about sticking to things, personal resolutions hold no interest for me--it's like setting yourself up for automatic failure. However, this year I seem to have made minor lifestyle changes without officially resolving to. They sort of snuck up on me sideways. Since Jan. 2nd I have walked to work every day, unlike the previous eight years of taking public transport. I have also made more of an effort on the domestic front, but there I didn't really have much choice since I have been a nomad for the past couple of months while my house is being renovated.

Breaking up with the boyfriend 4 Jan was more of a spontaneous decision. Not quite the same thing, although one could argue it might be a lifestyle change.

When you are staying as a guest in friends' homes for extended periods, you have to adapt to their routines and try to be on your best behavior. Staying one night or a weekend with friends doesn't count. I am firmly convinced anybody can get along for a short period of time. Everyone is on their easygoing, relaxed behavior then, and house rules are not even explained, let alone enforced.

The various friends whose spare bedrooms I have taken over in various countries (er, two) are great friends: laidback, warm, generous people I like to socialize with (as are others who offered but live too far away). Staying long-term in a friend's sitting room is doomed to failure. You are guaranteed to disrupt their routines and annoy them. Having your own room makes it easy to give the loving couple some time on their own or even avoid them if they or you are particularly grouchy.

However, these cushy housing situations I have found myself in still have their pitfalls--I try my damnedest to conform to their household routines and be a polite guest, but their varying kitchen routines are a minefield. I was and have been dealing with two couples, which means four sets of kitchen rules and guidelines--too much for my little brain to follow. Okay, some of the rules are pretty easy: what goes into the dishwasher and what gets hand washed. One of my hosts is the designated kitchen king and gave up on trying to teach me stuff, preferring to do everything himself efficiently. Another host rinses everything before putting it in the dishwasher, while a third queen of the kitchen puts everything in dirty (barely scraped off) but taught me which way the utensils have to face.

Apparently, how much you pack the dishes into the dishwasher and how often you run it also vary greatly from one household to the next.

Admittedly, I am not a goddess of domesticity. One morning during breakfast and elaborate party preparations, I toasted a bagel in the toaster oven without noticing that there were meltable ingredients intended for the party sitting on top of the oven. I got a red card for that one, and was sent to the shops in search of pomegranate juice, cornichons, and steno lighters. That guaranteed my absence for a few hours, especially since I hadn’t a clue what steno lighters looked like.

Perhaps I am just rusty. When I was growing up, we had to clean the dishes until they were practically spotless before putting them in the dishwasher (I never saw the point myself), and now I do not even own a dishwasher. My friendly hosts have other piddly kitchen guidelines, but you get the idea. I will be going home soon, back to my own kitchen domain where I can set a new routine, perhaps incorporating some of the lessons I have been taught. That sounds suspiciously like a resolution though…


Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, or I'll write it, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Fay's Little Friend, Long Island NS (minus 18C)

Pamela's an Auld Dog

Pamela Glendenning is a twenty three year old tarot card reader, world traveller and artistic soul. (bio & photo by Q.)

I think the Wicca philosophy for life is wonderful, "Do as you please, as you want, so long as you do not harm yourself, or others." You need to have a pretty strong belief system and a well defined set of values to live by it. It can be interpreted differently by those who use it, therefore it's not going to work for everyone. It is taking me a long time to reach the ability to do this, I've been striving everyday for years; a real challenge keeps you motivated!!

I'm pretty young and i dont know a whole lot, but to have no fear, to strive to help others, and to be at peace and stillness in your own mind, are worth more than any amount of material wealth, really.

Some people say that the world is controlled by a minute few, very rich, little known, almighty powerful people. They are shape shifting lizards in suits, who live off the emotion of fear, and need humans as their slaves. Whether this is true or not is highly debatable!! But I hope it is, as I can never understand the motivation behind our most powerful leaders and the decisions they make concerning human life and the environment. If they are reptiles motivated by sheer greed and lust for power I can kind ofunderstand where they're coming from, otherwise their reasoning is completely lost on me.

Drugs are the worst thing in the world and the best thing in the world. A dychotomy, like most things in life, completely simple in its complexity.

We are so technologically advanced it is a wonder, but our ignorance and lack of empathy concerning our fellow human beings rivals that of our cavemen ancestors, most of the time.

I find that if you wear sandals as much as possible your overall perspective on life becomes more chilled back, relaxed and calm. Free your feet!!

I have seen far too many coincidences and patterns in scrying tools; tarot cards, crystal balls, pendulums etc., to dismiss their uncanny ability to tap into the unconcious mind, and to allow a reader to consciously analyse the information given.

Everyone is the same but also very different. Each has his own ability and stength to cope with what life throws their way. Therefore I think it's important to keep this in mind when dealing with folk and their problems. Do not judge another against yourself, each lives within her own context.

Everything in life is energy. How you use or ignore this power is completely up to you. If you harness this energy for positives and redirect it back into the universe, in a very short period you will start to see some very special, amazing results.

Television is probably the most pointles activity one can immerse themselves in. It is a cheap (and effective) means to control the masses, it wears down one's intellect, and it turns people into slobs. I know because I used to watch it eight hours a day. I haven't watched TV for a few years now, no advertisements invade my space, tis bliss!! All you need to do is unplug your arial, and get a dvd player, all the best movies and quality shows are available on disc, sorted!!

And as for the news. . . buy a paper, that isn't owned by supervillain (lizard) Rupert Murdoch.

As the old maxim gos: "All energy follows thought." If you project fear, paranoia, and restriction, these forces will enter and control your life. On the other hand, if you fill your head with love, joy, and freedom . . .well the sky is the limit, for sure! I know it sounds corny but it works.

Giving up smoking is the hardest, yet most liberating thing I've ever done. It took years to accomplish, but worked eventually. If you feel theinclination, go for it, you have the power!!!

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Chocolate Lake, Halifax, January 2007

December Sunset, Lough Derg, Ireland

Is it over yet? The SCANDAL I mean

I read somewhere recently about an office game that some people play, I can't remember its name, where you make up funny statements about the war in Iraq, really ludicrous ones, statements that can't possibly be true.

Damned if I can remember any of them now...

Maybe Despite the whole world, including the US Army, wanting the opposite, Bush sends more troops to Iraq! was one of them.

Anyways, I've been thinking about that all week, which has been a lively one in Nova Scotian politics.

We had a SCANDAL, boys and girls.

Nova Scotian Cabinet Minister rear-ends Sports Editor and journalist going home after night in the pub and runs away!

Freelance photographer follows Cabinet Minister home and cell phone films him weaving across the carpark!

None of the media workers recognise the Cabinet Minister.

Eventually, Halifax cops get footage and tell photographer it is Cabinet Minister.

Photographer sells footage to the CBC and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!

Cabinet Minister resigns and takes extended leave of absence from Caucus and no journalist asks him why!

Desperate to keep story running, media discover that Minister's lease car - a second hand Jetta - costs taxpayers $880 a month.

Nova Scotians wake up to the real scandal of over-priced car leases and say hmmmm...

At this point Queenie does the same and checks all the lease companies and their directors against the Tory donation list - grand total $13,500.

Never mind that!

The Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief of Staff and the Director of Communications were all told about the fender bender on the night in question by the Tory Caucus Chairman who drove past the incident and said, jeez, that looks like Ernie's car.

Which is fine, except they'd all been pretending that they only found out two weeks later (giving the Minister time to sober up, presumably).

Upon finding this out, media who have been scrumming the Premier spot the Chief of Staff sneaking out of Government Buildings and abandon the Premier in mid-sentence to chase his elderly Chief of Staff down the road and pin him to some railings until he answers question.

Chief of Police holds press conference to point out that cops are not incompetent for failing to breathalyse the Minister - he didn't answer the doorbell when they called round.

Chief of Staff holds press conference and says he didn't ask Minister whether he'd been drinking because he didn't want to know. Then states that he had a drink with the Minister earlier on the night in question.

Media don't ask the Chief of Staff why he didn't want to know.

NDP filibuster bill on campaign finance and rip into the Government at every possible opportunity and House sits until midnight every night for a week.

Media chase every politician they can find wanting to know what they know about the SCANDAL.

Minister for Agriculture, who until today had been open about incident, now states that he has a lawyer and is not answering questions and gets chased to the railings. Three times in one day.

Liberals, who are propping up the minority Tory Government, say they are having serious discussions about not doing that anymore, in between voting for the Government's crappy campaign finance bill.

Queenie is very amused at the complete lack of dignity shown by everyone in this situation but the NDP.

This is a great game, all the same.

Matthew's an Auld Dog

Matthew is a 38 year old, married father of three (Evelyn, Charlie and soon to arrive baby - Q): a veteran, a liberal, a hopeless romantic, and a walking cocktail party of information from Minneapolis/St. Paul.


If your rational for getting fit is a date on the calendar, it will fail. It has to be a lifestyle change. I can see why some people get real frustrated. I can gain 20 pounds in two weeks easy, but to lose that 20 pounds will take me 6 months of working out and watching what I eat.

Let's face it; the USA is the bi-polar nation. We tell everyone that looks don't matter that it's what is on the inside that matters, and then have our NEWS reporters telling us all the latest Paris and Britney gossip. We tell everyone that they need to be healthy, flooding them with exercise options and healthy advice, only to immediately follow it up with monster burgers, out of control portion sizes and junk food cheaper than healthy food. We tell people it's not what you want, it's what you have, and then create a society of lemmings with false desire for the newest and latest gadgets,often in a brazen quality that suggests that this one phone/car/television is the thing that will finally make you happy.

I love Minnesota, and Canada for that matter, but Ireland is truly wonderful, with the most beautiful people in the world.

Don't ask someone about their past if you don't want to know about it. Just know they are with you now.

Here is the great debate. Work something mindless, with limited interruption, put in your hours and leave, have some physical labor involved, but you never will bring work home, and earn $30,000, or work that skilled position where you work way over 40 hours for the week, constantly bring work home, think about work even when you don't have to, sacrifice family functions and make $70,000. There are times I wish I were still pouring beers in a bar.

I will say I am glad I am eating steak and fresh veggies instead of spaghetti and bananas.

We in the USA really push ourselves hard, much harder than I think we have to. I think it is a vicious pyramid where the guy at the top feels that making 40 million a year is not enough and then pushes upper management, who in turn push middle management, who then in turn create long hours and tough shifts for the workers, so that the next year they make 42 million. In that same time, no one calculates the accumulated cost of lost family time, stress on workers at work, stress in workers lives caused by work. I think we devalue the cost of actual living.

I had a boss tell a staff meeting that if you have a loved one who is getting ready to pass away, that she had no problem refusing to let you go be with them because you shouldn't wait until the end to let them know how you feel. It told me more about her than I ever wanted to know.

I love the men and women who choose to fight for the ideals that originated in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. They have come freely to serve. They give themselves and their blind faith in our country fills me with pride. There is only one thing they ask in return for their service; don't send them into personal or unjustified conflict.

Do I love the troops? Of course I do. That's why I don't want to see them come home in body bags from a country that doesn't want us there, for nothing more than potential corporate profit.

George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever seen. He is the Anti-Lincoln. Instead of sacrificing his personal agenda for the betterment of the country, he sacrifices the betterment of the country for his own personal agenda. He is even worse than William Henry Harrison, the President who died a month after his inauguration.

I have to live somewhere that has four distinct seasons. Change is good.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, which offers the collected wisdom of an individual for the rest of us to ponder. If you want to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 pearls of wisdom, with a bio and a photo to Queenie, at auld.dog@gmail.com

Auld Dog - the first instalment

If you scroll down to the previous post, you will see that I have invited people to submit an Auld Dog post, which is a summation of all the nuggets of wisdom you have collected to date. Several people have mailed me back looking for guidance, headings, questions, etc.

If I do that, then I will be imposing my agenda on your thoughts. Which is not what I want to do. This isn't This much I know, this is Auld Dog.

In other words, just write the goddamned things will you! You're all talented people.

But here's one I prepared earlier, in case this happened.

Auld Dog

By Queenie

Queenie is a thirty six year old Irish woman who now lives in Canada and works for the NDP.

______________________

The rate at which we, as a species, are consuming every single thing on this planet terrifies me. I saw a documentary recently on seahorses, which will be extinct soon because people like to have dried seahorses to hang on their walls, or to eat, or something.

My first tattoo was of a seahorse. I love their shape. And the way the males nurture the babies.

They harvest them alive and leave them to slowly dry out in the sun by the way. The seahorses.

I fell in love with my partner when he and his buddy Martin cooked a romantic, candlelit, lake-side dinner for me and Martin’s wife and two other girl friends on a camp stove. Next day, I overheard the other women talking about how great he was, and I had this lovely warm feeling of ‘he picked ME!!!’ inside, which is still there every morning. He’s taught me how to make our love for each other spill over into everything else we do and make it shine.

I think what we need to do now is hold every action and object in our hands and ask ourselves, what’s the impact? It’s so tiring sometimes, though, I have to go to BurgerKing and rebel for a minute or two.

Good politics (by that I mean dialogue) does good things for good people. It’s power that’s the problem. The man who said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely was the cleverest one ever.

Ohmygod! I just assumed it was a bloke said that. That says it all, really.

Every single morning for the last two years I have woken up and wondered whether or not I should have a baby.

But imagine if I had a child, and when it saw my seahorse tattoo it assumed it was like a unicorn? An allegorical symbol, not real?

When I watched the German film Stalingrad, I was so moved that I was lying in a foetal lump bawling my eyes out at the futility of it all when the last soldier walked out into the snow. That’s why I rent dvds. Catharsis is so much easier in the comfort of your own home.

There’s a selfish little bit of me that just doesn’t understand why all my Irish friends won’t come and live here in Canada. But there’s always the telephone.

Technology is a tool, not a status symbol. People who use technology in public to highlight their status are the tools.

I always thought if you gave teenagers the vote the world would be a better place, but now I reckon the people who tell them what to buy will tell them who to vote for, same as the rest of us.

I wonder who tells me to vote Left?

I had a boyfriend once who reckoned everyone was one or more G&Ts below par. I try to be just one, but some evenings I feel a good way down the bottle below par. So I don’t keep gin in the house.

I always took my parents far too seriously, until one day about a year ago they asked me to stop. I think they just want us to enjoy each other’s eccentricities now.

We developed social networks for a reason. For our survival. And yet the whole modern success mythology is based on the need to be a redoubtable individual.

For that reason, I was hugely relieved when we invented the Internet, but now we have MySpace…

If I were locked alone in a tower in deepest Albania from which no sign of life could be spotted across the mountains, I would find a party. It’s the Irish in me.

I can’t imagine a life in which I don’t talk about politics every single day. I blame my dad. He made me read the Irish Times when I was too young to know any better.

Sometimes I wish I weren’t so serious-minded. It played havoc with my sex life when I was single. Men just don’t want to sleep with the Head Girl.

One of the things I love about my partner is that even though the Head Girl was on vacation when he met me, he took it completely in his stride when term started again.

On the Future, and its coincidence with New Year's Resolutions

In response to my previous post, when I was using prevarication about what to write on as a space filler to make the post look like a half decent sized one,

Andrew Farrell said...

Talk about the distinction between your New Years Resolutions and your hopes for the future!I'm not just taking the mick, I'm interested in what bits of your future you do and don't see yourself having control over.

Which comment has been mulling around in my head all day. Without much of a breakthrough so far.

I have however:

• painted the bedroom set an ivory base-coat,
• tidied the utility cupboard, the linen box and the fridge,
• sorted out the recyclables,
• filled a garbage bag of clothes and shoes I don't wear anymore to send to the SallyAnne,
• spray-painted the red fold up chair black,
• shouted at Himself about something that needed shouting about,
• read the Observer online,
• talked online to my mate Juicy Lucy in Aswan, Egypt, where she is currently leading a Dragoman trip,
• made a stew,
• ordered photographs online,
• made Himself's birthday present,
• started a new photobook on Shutterfly (DON'T do this - dreadful interface, I am only doing it because it comes free with this year's photo print plan),
• finished John Updike's Terrorist, which is pretty darned good for an Updike,
• and played numerous games of Farm Hustle (and got to round three finally).

A typical lazy Sunday afternoon Chez Queenie.

I jest.

All of those things had to be done today because I should have done them all in November. In November I sat on the couch feeling sorry for myself, drinking wine, eating chocolate and watching television. Which is the only way I can get through November after trying every other possible alternative.

Which brings me to the first of my NY resolutions, to wean myself back off television.

Which leads me to Andrew's essay title: The Distinction between Queenie's NYR and her hopes for the Future.

I made an interesting realisation recently. As I am a person who needs other people's affirmation in order to feel good about myself, putting myself in a situation where the only people I have in my life are workmates and television actors is a bad thing.

Yes, I know, I know, I should know this. I do know this, I have known for a long time, for example, that working in politics, which is dog eat dog at the best of times, is bad for a girl who needs a lot of affirmation. I have also known for a long time that television is bad for the soul generally, but particularly for \ sensitive soul, who is worried about the colour of her teeth, skin, hair, size of her bosom, hairiness of her arms, blackheads on her nose, shape of said nose, etc. most of the time, not to mention every second sentence that comes out of her less than tactful mouth.

But there is a hell of a difference between knowing something and realising it about yourself.

There is.

Hence the decision to wean myself off all television except for Heroes, Ugly Betty, and Grey's Anatomy, which are all full of flawed people and therefore ALRIGHT TO WATCH.

Great, I hear Andrew say. Just great. But what about the dog eat dog world of Monday to Friday?

Hmmm... I guess that's where we enter the realms of 'parts of my life I have no control over', albeit temporarily. Seeing as my Canadian residency permit is conditional on my having a job in Canada, and my work permit is for this job only.

But if I spend the evenings undertaking self-affirming stuff, I'll be better set up for the day.

I had another realisation recently. I am a creative person.

I am.

I am a creative person who thinks I should be a writer because I love to read and I admire authors, but I am a creative person who needs constant affirmation from others, so taking photos and making calendars and painting furniture and making pretty cards to sell in the market and writing in my blog is much more satisfying.

Which leads me to the second of my resolutions.

Fuck the novel.

It's never going to happen.

An enormous weight of self-loathing is lifted off Queenie's shoulders.

However, the desire to write novels was always grounded in the need to try to make some money from being creative (those of you who wish to sneer should examine the bank balance of one JK Rowling), so the downside of the resolution is that I have to try and make some money from my photos this year.

Especially since I sneaked the Canon EOS in before 1 January and the third of my resolutions.

I have enough things (apart from a car).

I have enough clothes. I have enough shoes. I have enough art. I have enough pieces of pottery. I have enough dishes. I have enough books (until I have finished reading them all). I have enough music. I have enough make up and body lotions. I have enough jewellry. I have enough throws. I have enough linens. I have enough curtains.

I don't have enough money in my travel budget. I don't have enough savings. I don't have enough money to invest in a business someday. I don't have enough money to buy a piece of land near the Tobeatic Wilderness, and build an off-grid house on it.

So this year I resolve to cut down on my expenditure and start saving for the future.

Which leads me to the issue of the future. And my control over it.

I must say, Andrew, I laughed my ass off when I saw that.

Control??????????? ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Does anyone?

No I am not giving the lecture on global warming, although Himself's son has copped it now and apparently we are all going to be flooded in thirty years. You have been warned. Start practising your paddling.

Then I started to think about it.

What can I not control?

I can't control the decision to be made by Immigration Canada. I can't control the way Ireland is now and the loss of what I liked about Dublin. I can't control Himself's dreams of the future (although I can influence them to a certain extent. not that I ever would. much. :-), which have a pretty strong impact on my future. I can't control what happens to my family and when and if they will need me to care for them.

I can't control the price of property in Ireland and the ECB rate and its impact on my mortgage. I can't control my income too much at the moment. I can't control when the Tories are going to call an election, which will impact on my life.

So I guess my resolutions are all about how I fill in the time while I wait for these forces to move me one way or another.

Most people call this time life. I call it this year. I don't think any further than that. I never have.

Maybe I should extend my view. I don't know...

Whacha think, Andrew?

And my final resolution for this year is to start a 'This Much I Know' column, a la Observer magazine. I'm going to call it 'Auld Dog', as in 'the auld dog for the hard road'.

For those of you who don't read This Much I Know every week, it is a column in which a person, old/ young, famous/ normal, male/ female, etc. etc. is asked to summarise the things they have realised about life. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are sad, sometimes they are downright sensible and useful to think about, sometimes they highlight just how shallow the person is, sometimes they reveal hidden depths. My favourite last year were Bill Nighy's and an elderly guy who sells vegetables in Covent Garden market.

To submit an entry, email 600 - 700 words of wisdom, not less than ten individual Auld Dog conclusions if you can, along with a short bio and a photo if you like, to Auld.Dog@gmail.com and I will post them here.

Happy New Year everyone. Finally.

Queenie's back in Canada

Having had a month’s break from blogging, it is as difficult to go back to as it was to go back to school.

Or work.

Or to get those essays in by early January.

Or face into exams.

Queenie has spent ALL DAY tidying her apartment: and by tidying her apartment she means the kind of tidying that entails laying her socks and tights out in orderly lines in their drawer, which has been dusted and lined.

Of sorting her tops into piles named: basics, summer, funky all-year, sporty (there was just the one), outdoors, and sparkly (lots of them of course).

Of rearranging her rock collection.
And her ornaments.
And her candlesticks.

That kind of difficult.

Studying for her finals kinda difficult.

A big ‘uuuuunggghhh’ of boredom mixed with guilt and a tincture of panic squeezing her temples everytime she tries to tackle it kinda difficult

At least her future isn’t riding on her blog…

But now she is bored of tidying, not that she’s finished, no sirree bob, it will have to be in order to find the bed tonight.

So maybe a bit of writing might break the monotony of folding.

So why the long break?

It wasn’t intentional, although Queenie could pretend it was and no one would be the wiser. It just panned out that way. Early December was frenetic – pouring four weeks of work into two so that Queenie could go on holiday; going on holiday for three weeks; and then another frenetic week in work while she tried to figure out what she was supposed to be doing in 2007.

Watching the federal government try to work out how much of a threat to their planned June majority Stephan Dion is, and watching the provincial government drive itself out of office through its own incompetence, whilst trying not to laugh at either of them because we are a RESPONSIBLE Opposition is what I’ll be doing mostly, it would appear.

Also, watching the Labour party fuck up the election in Ireland AGAIN is on the cards too. But at least that won’t lead to any canvassing on my part.

Queenie will sit this one out.

A lot of politics is sitting waiting patiently for the other shoe to drop. More difficult than it looks.

Anyways, more of that anon, I don’t want to talk about politics today.

What should I talk about?

New Year’s Resolutions?

The Best of 2006?

My trip to Ireland?

My impending application for residency in Canada?

My hopes for the future?

The band of uuunnnggghhh tightens imperceptibly at the thought of all of them.

Queenie is coming home soon...!

I am going to be in Ireland in 283 hours!

And I keep thinking about whether or not it will be the same.

Which is pointless.

Because I have forgotten what it is like.

Some time is passed trying to remember what Dublin is like...apart from pub interiors...

I remember them pretty well.

I think it's because they're where all the light and colour were.

I can't get my Control button to work. I'm stuck in italics.

Some time is spent fixing the italics button.

Okay... where was I?

Oh yes. Light and colour.

That's how I remember things.

This journey I have been on, for the last year and a half, has ramped up so much speed that I am now HURTLING through time and space in my own time machine with my own assistant.

And I am about to step into a new episode, which will be Dublin in the Future.

Christ I hope there aren't any Daleks.

They're like bears. Only worse.

Or zombies.

Himself will probably try to shoot one of them. For supper.

Final Ballot and new Liberal leader

Total Valid Poll - 4,605
Needed to Win - 2,304

Candidate - 1st - 2nd - 3rd - 4th

Dion - 858 - 974 - 1,782 - 2,529
Ignatieff - 1,412 - 1,481 - 1,660 - 2,076


Well, at least the environment will have a champion at a very senior level in Canadian politics, as Dion is one of the architects of the Kyoto second level targets and actually named his dog Kyoto.

It will cause upset in the Liberal party as all the old guard were backing Iggy or Rae. But who cares about that.

And poor Iggy. I do admire his journalism and intellect. But he's not a very good politician.

So now Canadian politics are remarkably like Irish politics. Without the personality.

Stephen Harper is Michael McDowell without the personality.
Stephane Dion is Michael D. without the personality.
The Greens are just as annoying and lacking in personality as their Irish counterparts, but they're in trouble now with a viable Liberal alternative.
And Jack Layton is Enda Kenny with a porn star moustache.

And I'm done with politics for a month. Onto nicer things.... my forthcoming holiday to Ireland.

Third Round Results

Total Valid Poll - 4,817
Needed to Win - 2,410

Candidate - 1st - 2nd - 3rd

Dion - 858 - 974 - 1,782
Ignatieff - 1,412 - 1,481 - 1,660
Rae - 977 - 1,132 - 1,375

Well, there you go. It's a Dion - Ignatieff race and Dion is in charge.

So Bob Rae is the kingmaker.

The expectation is that he will let his delegates vote freely. (Like he has a choice). Iggy is gone to talk to him now.

Iggy is very arrogant. He probably won't eat crow enough to pull it off. But what the hell do I know.

Third Round Ballot Results not even in yet and it's chaos

Well, the prevailing sentiment amongst the pundits is that Bob Rae is out. So there goes my prediction. The Dion camp is very smug. The Ignatieff camp is showing off minority delegates they are snaffling from other camps.

The DJ is playing "We are Family". As the family is tearing itself apart on live television.

Again.

This is truly the most bizarre event I have ever seen. Rick Mercer, who is the Gerry Stembridge of Canadian politics, is on the panel now and is pointing out how everyone in the convention centre is lying through their teeth and how it is complete chaos.

You can email Peter Mansbridge who is hosting it. Most of the emails are from concerned citizens wondering how the candidates get to go to the toilet without being followed by a media scrum.

The answer is they don't. As far as I can see.

Twenty minutes before the results are out the Rae camp is unofficially conceding.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How things might shake out

Ooookay... there are 1,100 votes up for grabs.

Here's what I think.

Ignatieff probably won't win now. In fact, he's left the convention floor to huddle with his advisors.

Kennedy asked his delegates to go to Dion. The reason he has done this is because he is from Ontario and wants a Quebec leader, so that the next time it will be an Ontarian (traditional the Liberal leaders alternate).

The polling shows that Kennedy's delegates are evenly split between Rae and Dion. If this happens, Dion will remain in third place and will be knocked off the the ballot paper. Then Rae will beat Iggy as Dion's people will go to Rae.

If Dion gets 2/3 of the delegates, and Rae gets 1/3 (including the Dryden votes), then they will both pass Iggy and he will fall off the ballot paper. That will be really interesting, as the final showdown will be between a francophone policy wonk and an Ontarian former socialist. The Liberals need Rae, but they might not be able to stomach him and go for Dion. That will be a mistake. Dion will not beat Harper.

If Dion gets all of Kennedy's votes, then he will jump into the lead and Dryden's votes will decide who comes second. Rae could fall off the ballot then. If that is the case, then possibly his vote could give it to Ignatieff.

But I don't think Dion will get that much of a transfer. He's too francophone.

Second Ballot Results

Total Valid Poll 4,690,
Needed to win 2,346

Dion 974 up 138

Dryden 219 down 19

Ignatieff 1,481 up 69

Kennedy 884 up 30

Rae 1,132 up 155

The vote is down on the last one. So people are holding their fire.

So Ignatieff is the only one who only needs just one candidate to move to him to win. His people are more tail up than before. Rae and Dion both need Kennedy and Dryden to win on the next ballot.

Dion is calling for all delegates to move to him. They're waiting for Kennedy to call for his delegates to go to him. Dryden will go to Rae, presumably.

And there's about 1,100 votes up for grabs now and there's twenty minutes to snag them. Even though a candidate can ask his delegates to move to another candidate, they don't have to do it. They can vote for whomever they want. As can anyone after the first ballot.

Very strange system.


Rae only got about half of the votes he was trying to get from Volpe and Brison's camp, whereas Dion got all of Hall-Findley's votes. Now Dryden has offered him 219 votes, but if Kennedy drops out, he has over 800 which, if he delivers them to Dion will push Dion ahead of Rae.

Michael Ignatieff is sitting looking a little lonely as no one is offering him votes. There's a substantial Anyone but Iggy campaign going on.

Watching water polo in murky water

While we are waiting for the results, Ignatieff and Rae, who were room mates in University, had a staged meet and greet where they said that friendship is more important than politics.

I wish.

Speculation is rife that Rae and Iggy are going to combine to defeat Dion and Kennedy. Kennedy will go over to Dion if he comes in fourth. The word is that Dryden's people will go over to Rae.

So it is starting to look like I might be right and it will be Rae and Dion on the final ballot. Which is Ontario v Quebec.

When is it otherwise??

But will the next ballot be the third or the fourth.

I am such a junkie for this shit....

The vultures have appeared

Just little dots in the sky over the conference centre at the moment.

They are particularly zoning in on Iggy, as he is sitting in the hall with his wife in an obvious sulk about something. His inexperience in politics plays against him at times like this - he forgets he has to pretend that everything is hunky dorey even if his whole strategy is falling apart.

What is going on now is that each camp is trying to poach delegates from other camps so that they can a) get more votes in the second ballot, and b) persuade the media that they have the momentum.

They are all in groups in the conference hall, each of the groups shouting and singing, carrying banners and posters.

Tambourines with the face of the candidate on them are big this year, boys and girls, for those of you who will be running election campaigns next spring/ summer. I will work on the first campaign to offer me free tambourines. They rock.

Ignatieff supporters are now shouting and roaring and tambourining loudly as he has poached 40 South Asian minority delegates from other parties. Rae's people are quietly tambourining the news that he has poached Dion people. Dion has changed his colour scheme today from Liberal red to Green. To symbolise growth. Yeah, Stephane, I believe you. Why don't you just leave and form an environmental party called the Greens.

Dion has poached Ignatieff people, but.

Wolfie Kennedy has managed to poach one person from the other camps. I think his youth is showing now and the momentum is not going to the whitest teeth in the room.

Politics is so peurile sometimes, isn't it.

My gut is telling me it will be between Rae and Dion and that Rae will win. Second ballot voting is just finished so we will know more in a few minutes

Now they're playing ground hurling...

Okay, official results of the first ballot:

Brison 192 - Scott has announced he is dropping out and going to Bob Rae.
Dion 858
Dryden 238
Hall Findlay 130 - Martha has announced she is dropping out and going to Stephan Dion
Ignatieff - 1,412
Kennedy - 854
Rae - 977
Volpe - 156 - Joe Volpe has announced he is dropping out and going to Bob Rae

They are doing everything in French and then English, so I keep getting the numbers wrong as the Quebec accent is difficult for me to understand.

So basically, the first ballot went as expected, except Stephane Dion (former Environment Minister and all-round good guy) edged ahead of Kennedy (toothsome guy I instinctively don't trust).

Himself and I almost had a row about Kennedy last night. Himself thinks he's the best. I had to explain that you had to not listen to what they say too closely and look at their teeth. Having said that, Himself is as entitled to his opinion as everyone else. And Kennedy is younger and more energetic.

Scott Brison (former Tory, gay MP, Nova Scotian and former star of this blog) is giving his 'I give up' speech. He has told his delegates that he will vote for Rae now, but they can go to whomever they like. How many of them will stay with the herd?

In terms of the second ballot, what was supposed to happen was that Dryden would drop out as well and then the second ballot would be a sudden death knock out between Dion and Kennedy (who are in third and fourth place). Fortunately for us junkies, Ken Dryden is being as bull-headed as he obviously was to be a hockey Hall of Famer and so there will be an interesting second ballot now. Interesting for that and for a number of other reasons:

- a number of delegates didn't get to vote yesterday because bad weather delayed them
- there are people called ex-officio delegates who can vote for whomever they like and they voted for Martha Hall Finlay and Ken Dryden last night for heart-tugging reasons.
- lots of people voted before the speeches last night, and Ignatieff in particular thinks he will get more votes in this round.
- the only person with any momentum is Dion, who is real, old-school, Quebec Liberal.

There is ongoing television coverage on three channels, but there is nothing going on, so the journalists are basically roaming the halls looking to see who's talking to whom.

Worse than the Fianna Fail Executive convention.

Gerard Kennedy - the uberkind

Gerard Kennedy is up now. He's positioning himself as the new Trudeau.

He has Trudeau's son introducing him.

Young Trudeau is possibly the most annoying Canadian on the planet. Bar George Stromboulopolous. Except George has a job and s not just an opinionated social butterfly. No, I don't really mean that. I like George, I'm just jealous because he has the best job in Canada, hosting The Hour, CBC's edgy, pop culture-y, witty current affairs program which goes out at eleven pm every night.

Secretly I like George because if Luke McManus was Canadian he'd be George Stromboulopolous.

And his teeth are too white.

Kennedy's I mean. Not Luke's.

Never trust a man who claims to care about the poor if his teeth are too white. Kennedy ran the first Food Bank in Canada.

That's my learning for today.
Kennedy is being even more boring than Dion.

Bob Rae is up next. And then the Prince of Darkness himself. Ignatieff.

Moving from critters to political critters!

This weekend sees the election of a new leader for the Liberal party of Canada, the long long battle for power which has been going on for almost a year now.

There are eight contestants: Michael Ignatieff (intellectual and former journalist), Bob Rae (former NDP premier in Ontario), Gerard Kennedy (social reformer young type), Stephan Dion (Quebecois candidate, former Minister for the Environment here), Ken Dryden (former hockey goalie and newbie politician), Scott Brison (Nova Scotian who has been the star of this blog before), some other non-entity I can't remember and Martha the woman with the double barrelled name who is coming in last.

There's a huge conference in Montreal where they are all giving speeches tonight and so I am in happy land.

Prepare to be bored for the next twenty four hours.

Very very bored.

Obviously I am up for Bob Rae. Although Ken Dryden's my underdog hero and his speech rocked just a bit ago. And when he came offstage a journalist asked him what he wanted and he bellowed "I want my canada back" at her. V. funny. I know exactly what he meant.

Stephan Dion is talking now and he has a very strong Quebec accent which I find offputting (along with most of Canada although they won't admit it). Although Dion was a good Minister of the Environment.

But he won't win I think. Although traditionally Liberal leaders come from Quebec.

Paul Martin was from Quebec, but he didn't sound like Dion.

Happy happy junkie politics place....! They're all taking lumps out of the Tories.
I should get myself a beer now.

Your seduction style

Another quiz from the blog of myles'.

Exciting (or possibly tragic) news on the critter front!

Queenie went out last night and had a few pints to mark the last night of being able to smoke in the pub and needless to say the pub was packed so she crawled home too late. And all day today she had a headache. Until she left work at four o'clock, whereupon the headache miraculously disappeared.

Which just goes to prove that it is work that I am allergic to and not too much alcohol.

I always knew that.

Anyways, on to critter talk and then we will be done with it.

Himself shot Mr. Buck through the lungs the other night with his Swedish early twentieth century sniper rifle and now we have a freezer full of venison.

So there. No more critter talk, there's too much death in it.

Tragic perhaps. Yummy definitely.

Tragic news on the critter front!

Alexa and Peter are dead.

I was home from work on Friday so I didn't feed them till eleven when I realised that Alexa was dead. Peter was pushing her body around the fish tank sort of aimlessly.

So I took her out and cleaned the tank and the filters and checked Peter for lice etc but he looked okay.

But today, when we got up he was sitting on the bottom of the tank, obviously in trouble. And when we tried to push him gently to see whether he would move, he shot forward, knocked his head against the filter and died!

I feel like such a failure. I'm sure I overfed them.

It's very quiet now with no tank bubbling away in the corner.

Himself has taken them back to the island to bury them under the chestnut tree in the yard.

Together forever...

They were only goldfish but they were great company for me when I was alone here last winter.

Moose Doosie and other critters - two

Not having a green bin down at the house on the island, we dump our organic waste outside the house where it lasts approximately forty seconds before it is taken by one of the many critters that share the neighbourhood with us. Usually the crows get to it first, having a helicopter view of the food situation, but it can attract raccoons and our pet deer too. If the location and time of day are right.

Crows are very intelligent critters, aren’t they? Down on the island, we have a mess of crows that wake us up every morning – quaaw, quaaw, quaaw they go - from about 6.30 onwards, insistently stirring up the whole house.

Usually I burn the toast in the morning, as I forget I am using the oven grill and not a toaster. Plus it’s the morning, so I can’t handle complicated technology.

Also it’s an excuse to put burnt toast out on the deck and watch quietly to see what will come for it.

If we sit quietly for a few minutes, momma crow (that’s who we think she is anyway) usually sidles up along the wall of the house, NYPD style, and slowly sticks her head around the edge of the patio doors for a look-see.

The first hint we get is when the sharp corner of a beak appears in the bottom right hand corner of the door. The trick is not to laugh, no matter how much you want to, as she takes the hump and flies off if you do.

She checks four or five times, exposing more of her head each time. We have to stuff our fists in our mouths to stop shaking with laughter.

Then, when she thinks it’s safe, she whips her head around to signal to the others – quaaw, quaaw, quaaw – who swoop down and carry off the booty.

A sort of crow version of Heist.

Not only that, but if you nip over to the back of the house and check out the kitchen window, you can watch them dipping the toast in a puddle to moisten it.

Very intelligent critters.

We got apples for the deer, to try to get them to come up to the back of the house, and all day that day you could see the crows hauling them, one at a time, off to wherever it is they stash their food.

We see the deer at night usually: a doe and two fawns. They come out of the woods at the back of the house and walk down to the orchard to eat the rose hips growing around the pond. If you drive up to the house at night, the headlights of the car will pick out three pairs of glistening eyes.

Himself is hoping that deer will evolve soon and start to realise that looking at a light is what gets them killed. There’ll be a new breed of super-deer, all wearing designer shades. Of course, it doesn’t stop him from shining a light out the back of the house every night in search of Mr. Buck. Who’s fair game apparently. Who knows this. Who’s far too canny to come down to the house in search of rose hips.

That’s what the missus is for.

She in her turn sends the fawns out first.

They gently nuzzle each rosehip off the branch individually, legs all akimbo trying to balance eating and standing.

It’s hunting season in Nova Scotia, so we are desperately hoping that no one will shoot them by mistake (or design). Hence the apples to keep the doe and fawns coming to our yard at night when the woods are full of people trying to shoot something.

Some people, who are the epitomy of ‘the market will solve everything’ philosophy that results in so many selfish actions, and the reason why this planet is in such bad shape, put apples in piles in the woods and then sit in a tree above the apples and shoot the deer when they come out to eat them.

Those people shouldn’t be allowed to shoot deer. In fact, those people should be invited to a free party, in a big fenced off area, which has a bar under a tree, and see if they like being duped.

Last Saturday morning, Himself had driven to work and I was upstairs when I heard a ‘come quick’ hissed from the kitchen. I went down and K was gesticulating wildly in the direction of the kitchen window, which looks out up the hill behind the house into the orchard and the woods behind.

The doe was frozen to the spot in the yard, staring in the window at us. She’d never been that close before. Then I realised, the car was gone, so she must have assumed the house was empty.

Little minx. She’s been coming down to eat the rosehips when Himself is gone to work.

I get such a kick out of watching animals engage with the possibilities offered by human neighbours.

Last week we had mackerel for supper and left the heads and tails on a platter on the deck for the raccoons.

Bad idea. The raccoons came alright, but hauled the mackerel heads off the platter round to the side deck to eat them in peace. Next day there was dried blood everywhere and teeny, tiny, blood-stained raccoon footprints running over and back across the deck, down the steps and along the footpath to the brook that runs in front of the house.

They snuck them out from underneath our noses that time. During the summer, we often got to see them sneak onto the deck to grab whatever we’d left out for them. I always imagine they’re a form of guerrilla fox with their bandanas and small handlike paws.

Then there are the squirrels.

Last weekend we went walking in the woods to see if we could find the buck that must be around somewhere and sure enough after about twenty minutes of tracking prints and scraped earth and trees (it being the rutting season) we turned a corner into a glade and there he was, just about to leap into the trees and freedom. If I was one to anthropomorphise animals I would say he tossed his antlers disdainfully at us before he leaped.

We came out of the woods eventually and met a guy on the road who was going to tend to his apple pile. Himself told him all about the buck we’d seen, up back of the old road, over a piece and toward so and so’s place, just by that alder stand where the such and such happened etc etc.

Captain Golden Delicious was delighted with the news and roared off in his pick-up. We walked on.

“Why did you tell him about the buck?”

“So he’d go lookin’ for it.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Well, he won’t find it where I told him it was, now will he?”

I had to take his word for it. News of his demise has not filtered through the community yet, though, so I have to assume he’s safe.

Not that we didn’t make a desultory effort to get him.

Towards dusk Himself loaded his gun and we went back up to the woods and climbed a tree where he has an old door lashed into place as a deer stand. We sat there for over an hour but Mr. Buck didn’t show.

Of course not.

We were sitting in the wrong tree, as far as I could see, it being about two hundred yards off the deer tracks we’d found earlier. There was another tree a bit further on that would have been more suitable. But I didn’t say anything.

I think Himself doesn’t have the heart to shoot a deer in front of me. I think he just wanted us to sit in a tree and hear the music of the woods settling down for the night.

After twenty minutes it was so quiet I could hear my blood running around my body.

Then a squirrel came along. He jumped from tree to tree underneath us, taking his time. Then he landed on our tree and scurried past and on up the hill. He was headed to another tree further up the glade, where his lady friend lives. I know this because I was sitting under that tree in the sunshine by myself a couple of weeks ago and they started going at it with great gusto, right above my head.

It was nearly dark anyways, and I had to climb out of the tree, so we decided it was time to leave.

You know you’re re-connecting with your environment when you leave the squirrels to enjoy the twilight in peace, don’t you!!

Moosie Doosie and other critters - one

I’m no Kate Moss.

For one thing, I’m dating a bassist. Not a lead singer. The bassist in Bandit, doncha know. Not the highly strung, former Libertine and current frontman of Babyshambles. My bassist is not a crack head neither, although he likes his vodka.

I’m not dressed like her neither. No thigh high boots topped by a pair of slinky shorts for this girl, although I’ve had my fashion moments. I’m wearing jeans and a fleece top, to ward off the evening fog creeping in from the Bay of Fundy.

I’m not chopping high grade cocaine into lines on top of an amp, long brown hair hiding my face.

I’m not hanging with Pete and his mates in a recording studio somewhere in trendiest London. I am in Freeport, Long Island, Nova Scotia. With Himself and his band mates, who are tuning up and drinking beer and doing all the noisy, pointless things that men do when they’re getting ready to play.

We are sitting in Bandit’s band shed. And it is Saturday night, just as it is all over the world.

We all find our own level of glamour. This is mine currently.

No rock stars in my firmament. Just real ones. Peeking through the fog swirling around Freeport.

Moosie Doosie is staring at me from underneath his fez. At least, I think he is. I can’t see behind his enormous yellow Elton John sunglasses. When I asked the guys, they said Himself had gotten him in Cape Breton and brought him home. He’s their mascot. He being the head of a four hundred pound bull moose, mounted onto a mahogany panel for display purposes. I found out later that Moosie Doosie used to hang on the living room wall in Himself’s house, where he convinced his young nieces and nephews that Moosie ran down the hill so fast he burst through one day and got stuck.

Looking at Moosie, I thought nice buy, dude, despite the fez and the sunglasses. Well spotted. He has a great eye for the eclectic, my man. A nip into some grubby ‘antiques’ store in Cape Breton must have resulted in this find.

Then I’m told Himself found Moosie Doosie standing in a swamp in Cape Breton, tracked him, circled him, shot him in the heart, then shot him six more times to stop Moosie’s death charge towards them in its tracks, tagged him, bled him, then winched him onto a truck and drove him home.

Of course.

Silly me.

Anyways, he’s retired from the house onto the wall of the band shed, alongside a poster of Elvira looking very 1985, pouting down from where she is draped over the bonnet of a classic car.

This is not the first band shed I have hung out in during a long life of trying to score the coolest guy in the room, but it is by far the coolest. And I’ve scored the coolest guy in the room.

Band sheds. As women have houses and living rooms and kitchens beauty parlours and shopping malls to bond in, men have band sheds.

Being a doyenne of these things, I understand the privilege of my position – a girl in the band shed. So I sit and drink my beer and stay quiet.

Across from my perch on the sofa (or cot as they say on long island), the wall is lined by an enormous baby blue cooler, lifted from a Dairy Queen years ago. Its got wonderful fifties curved lines. A relic of the days when things were made by people who had jobs in factories and mortgages and cars, not life sentences for sedition and a cot in a labour camp.

Down at the far end is a wood stove and a dart board.

Male heaven. Aren’t I the privileged little Queenie. Being allowed into the bandshed.

I am sitting on a green sofa, which is surprisingly clean and comfortable for a band shed sofa. I have a twelve pack of Schooner and three of the Bandits are tuning up while the drummer, who’s had quite a bit to drink today apparently, tries to crawl to the drum kit.

It’s proving pretty difficult for him to manoeuvre his way through the cables and amps and mike stands arranged around the practice area, even on all fours. In happy acknowledgement of his master’s quadrapedic behaviour, his Mamaluke is wandering around knocking things over with his tail.

Hell that’s a big dog. He can eyeball me when I’m sitting down. An Alaskan canine version of Boxer (Animal Farm), bred to pull extraordinarily heavy weights over short distances on ice. Because of that breeding, his shoulders are huge and his haunches are over-developed, but because of his thick fur you can’t see the muscle, and so he looks like an obese huskie without their cold cold eyes. After he knocks over my beer twice in vain attempts to lick me with his loofah of a tongue, I get his owner to put him outside.

This proves more traumatic for the owner than for the Mamaluke, as outside can only be reached by a steep staircase that plunges into the darkness of the hall. I forgot to mention that, didn’t I. The band shed isn’t a shed, it’s an old house the guys have done over to hang out in.

Of course.

What do you do when you’re in your thirties and you can’t play guitar at home anymore because you’ll wake the kids? You buy an old house in Freeport, near the Legion of course, and turn it into your dream hangout.

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.