The Greatest Band on Earth. More Bands

Inuit Panda etc. forgot to mention Sonic Youth.

My but we are being stoopid, as Queenie forgot about them too.

Accent Monkey said Prince then, Prince. Because nobody else has voted for him yet, and because I love him.

Polly said The Kings of Leon are the most interesting and entertaining thing to come along in quite a while... I know they only have three albums, but they are very good albums and they are a seriously excellent live act. There, taste defended. exhale. :-)

You're allowed have an opinion on this blog, Polly. Freedom of speech still reigned in Canada last time I checked. Even though the woman who threatened to punch me in the face today (for the sixth time, I really should go talk to a police officer about this and give him my notes, times, dates, locations, etc) told me that I was FUCKED.

That's right FUCKED, because of my blog.

I wonder if people with a criminal record can become RCMP officers?
Worth checking into.

Oh that's right, I already have.

I'm just too nice to do stuff like that.

But nice doesn't really seem to be working seeing as I'm going to be FUCKED anyway.

Well, when I say FUCKED, it may not have been that loud but her face was about two inches from mine while she was saying it (I was sitting down at the time) so it felt kinda loud.

I better not say who the woman is, in case I would be FUCKED as a result. But let's just say, she would be married forever.

I wonder what her favourite band is?

Oh hang on, I'll ask her long suffering husband! Who is in the kitchen making my lobster dinner right now.

Himself says it would have to one of them old Legion bands there, uhm, can't think of any of them now, let's see, oh what's his name.... I don't know, Queenie, I always called them old Legion bands.

Now he's singing 'I seen her over in the corner with another man, but she'll come home with me I'm sure' in a country twang.

So we'll go with Garth Brooks.

A true animal lover

is someone who's not afraid to save Rusty!!

Posting from the twin cities....

We have a neighbor two blocks away that has a cat. Now, first off, I like cats. We don't have a pet right now because we have three kids and the last thing I need is another thing to watch. The previous owner of the house we live in had about five cats and they used a lot of potpourri to hide the smell when we looked at the house. The smell was really bad the first year we were here and even today, seven years later, you can still smell them at times. Also when we first moved in, our neighbors had a cat that, due to the smell of the cats that were here, crapped in our garden all the time. That kitty met his demise at the hands of a raccoon in 2002

We started noticing Rusty coming into our yard early last summer. We found he had a tag on his neck and called the owner. The owner is one creepy dude. He came, took his cat and left. A week later, Rusty was back. Some times I would call the owner, other times he would leave on his own. We started finding cat crap in the yard and in the gardens and our neighbors actually had to take their sandbox out because Rusty thought it was his. I started to ask my other neighbors how many times they had called to get Rusty picked up and it was at least ten times combined. One neighbor's dog was bitten by Rusty and another neighbor had Rusty destroy half of her plants. I really started to dislike Rusty's owner when in September, I called him one day, told him I didn't appreciate the unwillingness to control Rusty and the very next day, at Evelyn's birthday party, here comes Rusty again, jumping on our outdoor table and nearly eating Evelyn's cake.

We have definitely seen a decrease in the amount of birds in the area, but my concern is really for the cat. The raccoons still live in the area and so do fox. We have a lot of street traffic and 169 is five blocks away. And I have heard enough neighbors say that if they corner the cat, and no one is watching, they will take care of Rusty the old fashion way. I started to research the laws of Hopkins to see where I stood as a property owner. It said if you have a nuisance dog that you can turn them into a local vet who acts as a pet impound. The next time Rusty came over, I put him into a cage and took him the the vet. He said we don't take cats, you need to go to the police. When I brought him there, the police told me there are no ordinances in regards to cats in the city of Hopkins, just dogs, and that the owner could technically charge me with theft. I asked him if I was in my yard, and Rusty was scratching my kids and I picked him up to help the kids, the minute I held the cat, could I be charged with theft? He said yes. The police went to the owner and said to keep control of the cat and that's the last we saw of the cat until this spring.

The minute it warmed up, I was outside and here comes Rusty. I called the owner for the tenth time and said I've had it. I said I'd called him enough and he just didn't seem to care about the welfare of the cat. The next time Rusty is in my yard, I will take him to the Humane Society .

The creepy owner then tells me, "well he likes to be outside on a leash." I ask then why is the cat running free at all. He shrugged. I told him again that the cat would go to the Humane Society and he said alright. I then went to the Hopkins City Council and pleaded with them to amend the city laws to account for cats the same way they account for dogs. Many of the city council agreed that the property owner does deserve some protection or recourse in a case like this.

Over the next week, I found the cat in my yard three more times. I really was having a lot of mixed feelings about this. On Wednesday night, I came home from a getogether with former co-workers to find the cat in the yard again. I said, this guy seems to be daring me to do this. We got, what we thought, was a sturdy box and placed Rusty in it. Taped it shut (he had breathing holes) and put him in the car. I had to drive about ten miles to the Humane Society and headed out with Rusty riding shotgun. I am guessing that Rusty must have had a hulk like reaction to Gamma radiation in his past because about three miles down the road, Rusty decided he wanted out of the box. He shredded the side of the box facing me and looked at me. It was go time. So here I am wrestling with this cat as I'm driving 65 MPH down the highway in a car with manual transmission. I managed to get off the road and get Rusty back in the box while receiving only one really bad scratch on my arm. Rusty realized his fate was sealed and just "meow-howled" the rest of the way there. I dropped him off and walked away.

The next day, I got a call from the Hopkins City Manager saying that they felt that the nuisance laws currently on the books would be applicable to the cat and vowed to send a cease notice to the owner. Also, I called the Humane Society to explain why a tagged cat was dropped off and they seemed to agree with me, especially when it comes to the safety of the cat. They never reveal how an animal gets to their facility and it costs him $25 bucks to get the cat out. So far, I have not heard anything from either Rusty or the creepy owner. This is what keeps me amused in my life.


Matthew, animal lover.

Hey Matthew, maybe Rusty is your karma? Ever thought of that?

- Queenie

Also, Himself having read this blog entry, says buy a super soaker water pistol and use it on every cat that gets into your yard and within a month you will have a cat-free zone.

Himself is usually right about these things.

- Queenie again

Great story but. We laughed our asses off.

- Queenie yet again.

A true Canadian

... is someone who can make love in a canoe.

I was told that once by a Cowboy Junkie.

Goddamn huge, wide, heavy things.

Any normal person could do it, I'm sure.

Anyways, after weeks of Kijiji-stalking, we found an old sixteen footer, with lovely wooden trim and the original seats still intact.

Not so sure we'll be portaging it through the wilderness anytime soon.

But it'll be great for fishing and camping. And pottering round Chocolate Lake spying on the neighbours.

So, yard cleaned up .... check.

Washer toss game unearthed from under the doorstep ... check.

New garden chairs .... check.

Lake canoe ... check.

Let the summer commence.

This greatest thing is going to be tough

Some more picks from people.

The Clash
The Who
Tom Waits
Bob Dylan
and, I dunno, Ella Fitzgerald era Duke Ellington band just to make sure that everyone thinks I'm a music snob.
Then again Led Zed is pretty good too.

Yes, Mike, us music snobs have got to stick together in this crazy world of cock rockk.

Polly is taking your "bands" thing literally and thus leaving out
Stevie Wonder (and the reason you would put him in is????? Sorry, hate SW)
Elvis Presley
Van (the man I assume)
David Bowie

so...

Led Zeppelin
The Kings of Leon
The Beatles
Fleetwood Mac
The Rolling Stones (which Luke has also voted for)

I have a feeling the kings of cock are going to run away with this one.

Born to Run in the USA

'I think that your entire life is a process of sorting out some of those early messages that you got.' - Bruce Springsteen.

I love The Boss.

He should be on the list for Greatest Band in the World ever.

And on the list of Greatest Dudes in the World ever too.

His music got me through the eighties and the nineties.

And I love his take on life.

Usually.

But he and I have diverged on the issue of the best Democratic Candidate in the World Right Now.

I suppose I shall have to give in finally.

Admit defeat.

But I am sad.

There was a great sketch on SNL last night (although I think it was a repeat). Obama calls Hilary at 3am and cries down the phone at her about his problems.

Which she sorts out.

And then she explains how to get the circuit breaker working again.

So I suppose I am not sad in a way, because she will still be around.

Politics is a dirty business.

The greatest band on earth

And so it begins...

Chocolate Socialist quite rightly pointed out that I got the lyrics to The Smiths entry assways.

Apologies for that.

I had most of a bottle of wine in me.

Rottenhat contributed in a positive way.

The Fall

Roxy Music

And a vote for The Smiths from his wife.

So the voting list is as follows right now:

Himself's Picks

Led Zeppelin
Nirvana
BB King
Neil Young - based on Harvest
Jimi Hendrix
Theory of a Deadman

Kris' Picks

U2
The Doors
Coldplay
Stone Temple Pilots
The Smiths

Agreed Picks
The Cult
The Cure
The Who

Queenie's Picks
Radiohead
Low
My Bloody Valentine

I am the sun and the earth

Kris is listening to 'How soon is now?' by The Smiths.

Where would you put this song?

In the 'Greatest Band in the World' canon.

It is just a song.

But still.

It is at the point in the evening when Kris wants me to type the words of the song out while it's playing.

Why do I always have to do the typing?

Himself is asleep with his head on the table.

He talked the whole way through Radiohead.... then fell asleep.

I am the song. I am the earth

Of a shyness that is criminally broken

Tum ti tum ti tum

You shut your mouth. How can you say

That I go about things the wrong way

I am human and I want to be loved

Just like everybody else does.

I am the sun. I am the earth

Of a shyness that is criminally broken

At this point, Himself woke up to say that that is it really for him with that song.

I thought it was pretty good...

What would you pick?

The Last Snowflake

Kris, Himself and I are starting the summer debate.

This year's debate is: 'Who is the greatest band ever?'

'Besides Led Zeppelin', says Himself.

This is a simple ploy on Himself's part to try to make sure he picks the winning band.

In case Nirvana doesn't win.

Kris is hedging her bets.

She's changed her mind twice, but I love all her choices so far.

U2

The Doors

Coldplay

Stone Temple Pilots

And one more, she can't remember.

You can pick four bands.

You can change them as many times as you like.

At the end of the summer we will agree on the best band in the world.

We are listening to Nirvana, right now, we started with Santana and Coldplay.

And we don't have a gun.

Says Himself.

And later, I'll get Radiohead on.

Because I'm doing the typing, that's why!

We cannot wait to hear what you think.

Ta ta , says Himself, broadcasting from a free Melwood.

Have I given people too much despair?

I don't know what to make of Nuala O Faoilean's interview about her terminal illness, which took place on Marian Finucane's show last week. (go to 6 mins 50 seconds to start it).

It ends with Nuala's whispered question, 'have I given people too much despair?'

I suppose it depends on the person, Nuala.

I found it deeply comforting and positive to be able to listen to two of the most influential Irish women of my lifetime discussing how it feels for one of them to face her own death. This pair have been a major part of the running commentary that takes place in Ireland, and have expressed views on pretty much everything that I have thought about in the last thirty five years or so. Death is one such topic, one that I seem to bump into a lot more these days, as you do when you age, so it is fitting that they tackled it.

There was beauty (which is the antidote to despair) in it as Nuala, despite her insecurities about it, is a deep thinker and she delivers her thoughts in a knitted wooly hat type of intellectual way that has always resonated with me as a similar kind of citified agnostic country catholic.

And there were flashes of the old Nuala, the Nuala that wrote for the Irish Times when I was a teenager and took no prisoners and taught me how to do it: the wry acceptance of how unimportant a mere woman at the edge of a small country on a small planet in a vast universe really is, followed up with a 'to hell with it, I'm going to voice my opinion anyway' speech.

Being faced with Nuala's desperate longing for a reprieve, her desolation at knowing life is finite, and her decision to share her despair with us was difficult. Why? To make it easier? To record it as a journalist? To get sympathy and attention?

It was hard to know what she wanted from us as listener.

Marian didn't wobble once which is probably testament to her work with the hospice movement, but she ended the interview very abruptly, I thought. Maybe she was going to cry.

She was very concerned about people with cancer and their families getting upset by conversations about death from cancer when there's great hope around nowadays.

Which I thought was a bit of a red herring. After all, she was interviewing a woman who was pulling back the veil of silence across the issue of death by cancer while dying of cancer.

Dying.

Not praying for some of the great hope there is nowadays.

But Marian is nothing if not reflective of the Irish love of a good red herring. That's why she's so successful. And why we don't talk about death by cancer generally.

Other people I know who listened to it have talked about the part of the interview that was most poignant for them. It's interesting. Some people were upset about Nuala leaving her room behind. Others were upset because she said she was glad she didn't have children. Another was upset by the way she didn't want to rear the fourteen year old girl she mentioned at the beginning of the interview. And everyone noticed the smoking thing of course.

There's a reason why we hear certain things of course.

I was interested in her current attitude to her earlier, oft-proclaimed view that passion was what counted.

Passion can go take a running jump at itself right now, apparently.

Marian asked her about love.

Well I always used to get love and passion mixed up, Nuala said, with one of her little laughs.

I always suspected that was the case. I never agreed with you about passion, Nuala. But I could never prove you wrong in my head, because I couldn't figure out what passion really was.

I think passion is an emotion you can feel about anything or anyone and yeah, it's great, but nowadays its meaning has been corrupted so much that we mistake it for other things.

I am passionate about photography.

They have a passionate relationship.

He is passionate about football.

etc.

I'm just noticing how stupid the word passionate looks by the way.

The above are all examples of what most people would consider the various forms of passion that exist.

And of course, when you grow up an Irish Catholic, the first encounter you have with the word is The Passion of Christ.

Here passion is a condition rather than an emotion, full of pain, suffering, misery, desolation, with the promise of elation at the end of it. Or elevation.

A heady mix.

And then you grow up and cast off the shackles of Catholicism and say thank Christ that's over, now I can have some fun and go out into the world.

And the world tells you that passion is actually, really about those things, just not necessarily on behalf of mankind, or indeed anyone else. Passion should be focused on the self: it can involve sacrifice (for yourself and your loved ones) to achieve greatness in your field, or a heady mixture of suffering and elation in a difficult (but emotionally and of course physically satisfying relationship), or even the loneliness (and moral sanctimoniousness) of a crusade.

To my mind, the world is difficult enough without having to try to have an obsessive, sacrificial relationship with it.

I told passion to go take a running jump at itself years ago.

Wry objectivity is a much easier approach. Or even self-piteous subjectivity, when it's that time of the month.

However, I've since found that passion sneaks back in. And when you let passion sneak into your soul, rather than grabbing at what you think it might be, it unveils itself.

A glance at the profile of the person you love makes you catch your breath yet again.

Why?

What makes that face do that to you?

Memorising all the lines radiating from their eyes, and wondering what caused them; the tinge of stubble on their jaw, the shine in their hair, and the swerve of their nose. The way the hairs lie across the shadow of the muscles of their arm.

Because you'd forgotten for a second how beloved their face is.

In case some day they don't come home.

To see how long you can do it before they sense that you are.

And then they catch your look. And it makes them feel great.

Why?

What makes that look do that to them?

That's passion. Right there.

The rest of it, all the moaning and groaning (as the Queen Mother would say) and focus and sacrifice and elation/ despair polarities is just obsession which is so prized in this world that is being run into the ground by obsessive people, it has been rebranded as passion.

I am wondering if Nuala did not mix up passion and obsession.

The way most of us catholic country girls have done at one time or another.

We are who we are.

Desolation doesn't change us.

It just makes us truer to our unique selves.

As Nuala would say.

When she wondered aloud how it was possible that she would be gone and all she knows gone with her I wanted to shake her, tumours and all.

You are a woman who taught two generations of Irish women how to think in their own way.

Thank you, Nuala.

Monday morning, grey again

The thing about the Canadian winter is that it usually ends.

Unlike the Irish winter.

One day you're up to your oxters in snow and wind and freezing rain and the next you're not.

The animals and birds get up and stretch and go about the business of procreation in the loudest possible manner and us humans smile at the sound of it.

Then we all sit around and wait for the leaves to appear.

Nothing yet.

tum ti tum ti tum.

No. Nothing.

One day in May, I will wake up and they will be here.

The leaves.

They do it every time.

A burst of energy.

Now though, we have a period of sun followed by rain followed by sun followed by etc.

It's called Spring.

It's nice.

But I would like for the sun to be out when I'm off work.

Not when I'm in work.

But I've never managed to find a country to live in that does that.

My Irish friends are discussing the camping arrangements for Electric Picnic.

This type of stuff makes me sad.

Nova Scotia is not noted for its live music scene. Which is a pity, because the chances of it raining in Nova Scotia the weekend of Electric Picnic are slim. Whereas in Ireland they are wider than slim.

Oh, I wish I could rearrange the world to suit myself.

Doesn't everyone...

Now I have to shower and dress because the woman I am waiting to call me is obviously not going to do that until I get in the shower. And then I shall go do my errands.

How grown up of me.

Grey day

boring sunday morning.

Our landlord stopped by yesterday with a notice that he is increasing the rent.

So I wouldn't sign off on it until he agreed to fix the stairs and change the carpet and fix the enormous hole in the yard.

But he still managed to leave without promising to do anything about it.

He's a slippery individual our landlord.

I'm standing there looking at him not meeting my eyes, in his playboy yachtie clothes and his expensive moccasins, thinking 'why the hell am I paying for his nice wardrobe?'

Time for a new strategy, I think.

In other domestic news, our grandchild cried all weekend apparently.

he he he he he he he....

Summer in Dublin

This summer, from July 4th-20th, George's Dock in the Dublin Docklands will be transformed into a "tropical seaside oasis", dotted with palm trees and beach cabanas, and will play host to activities such as yoga, tai chi, chess, volley ball and sandcastle building.

Bring your own beach towel, or relax on a sun-lounger and watch the world go by. Just hope that the weather plays ball or "tropical seaside oasis" could be words the organisers may regret using. - Irish Times

WTF? Are we thinking we're Paris now?

So I popped by Blogger today...

... on my way into my blog.

If this is just not like the beginning of a turf war with the neighbour then I don't know what it is.

But anyway.

I am the type of consumer that if, I am accosted by a service provider. And forced to make a choice between a relationship and money.

I will always choose the most cost-effective solution.

Because I am not well off to do otherwise.

But I expect options.

For my freedom.

Dare I ask what is the price of freedom nowadays?

Nova Scotia

is the beginning of the rest of the world.

It could be an Arcadia.

It was once.

It was Acadie.

I met a woman tonight.

Who is a Valley Baptist.

And she and I sat in a bar.

Uncomfortably.

That I, of course, had picked.

But we had a good chat.

We are all the same, us women in the office.

That's what I love about this job.

It's just a pile of women on a big floor of an office building.

And if I am anything.

Which I have never yet even believed that i could be.

But if i were

despite myself

i would be a leader of women

because that is the hardest job in the world.

and anyone who can do it

whether they are female or male or not sure

has my total respect.

Fuck the timelords...

... the librarians are going to win.

I don't follow technology, because they immigrate numbers into the language and that is foreign to me and I am rule-bound (which may or may not be my fault)

but it's all a spectrum.

So you talk to the people next to you.

Like in a cinema queue.

But hopefully a Leonard Cohen gig.

Paul Watts in Ireland,

has a ticket to Leonard Cohen,

who is canadian,

and is playing in halifax,

where queenie lives,

and she can't get a ticket,

episode 28,

in queenie's,

... lives her life again...

... in (the usually),

ever decreasing circles,

etc.

Himself is a Grampy at forty four

So Himself has become a Grampy.

At forty four.

Which makes me a step-grandma.

At thirty seven.

Which is a bit young.

But it's just for the weekend.

Phew!

Kitty has one of those rubber babies home for the weekend. It cries and does all the baby stuff and is supposed to teach her responsible behaviour (which includes not producing a real one I assume) and the stress of parenthood etc.

I'm a mom for the weekend! She announced on the phone.

Granny decided not to travel this weekend and by a serendipitous stroke, is missing the baby.

Hurrah!

Kitty was not appreciative of my glee at missing the baby.

I explained it would be shit if I were there.

Why?

Well, I would just stand looking over your shoulder all weekend telling you that you were doing it wrong.

True, she said.

She wasn't meant to say that out loud of course, but it's true what I said was true, so I shall just have to deal with it I suppose.

I am in two minds about a plastic baby being a contraceptive device, if that is what it is.

Maybe they work.

I think a distinct lack of suitable boys is a far better one myself.

Worked for me when I was young.

Plus the terror.

Of knowing.

That I would have to tell the Queen Parents.

That was the main barrier method in my life.

All the experts tell me that terror is a bad way to rear children.

And it is, absolutely.

But there is nothing wrong with sharing your dreams with your children.

It is the way that you articulate them that is fraught with danger.

That's why it takes a village to rear a child.

My grandchild will be fine tonight so.

Down on the island, with her great grandparents and her uncle and her grandfather.

Who assured me that if it cried during the night that it would get thrown out the window.

I asked him whether he had thought of a name yet.

So he changed the subject.

And told me another story of someone leaving the island.

I wonder why we all move around so much.

We get bored of each other I suppose.

It is the way we live now.

But it is very hard to say goodbye.

And as you get older, it gets harder to say hello as well.

And then Facebook starts making you do it.

Bah.

Facebook takes a new and scary turn

When I logged onto Facebook this evening, it gave me a list of people I may know. Mostly it was people who had four friends in common with me.

It gave me quite a jolt.

There were people on the list that I have been avoiding on Facebook for ages. So I'm wondering, are they getting the same message? And if so, are they avoiding me? Or are they just busy? Or have they not noticed the thread yet?

Interesting times ahead.

There was also someone I thought was a friend. So I must have been blocked.

Oops.

Mental note not to do that again.

There were people on the list that I'm pretty sure are avoiding me.

That's the beauty of Facebook.

Or it was.

You could avoid people without seeming to.

AND NOW YOU CAN'T.

So it's The Buttery in 1989 all over again.

Episode 27 of Queenie lives her life over and over again in ever decreasing circles.

Never mind.

Queenie is definitely middle-aged

Queenie always felt that a sign of youth was shouting at the evil nincompoops on the radio that constitute the news broadcasts. Moaning Ireland particularly irked her, for two reasons. Firstly that you had to listen to it to know what was going on for work (boring), and secondly because it was the same players spouting the same lines day in day out. Plus the tearing into them style of interviewing (which was apparently invented by her ex, but she only had his word for it, but he was usually right about stuff like that).

Leaving Ireland was a relief in a way. No more IBEC. No more Vintners Association. No more Tom Parlon. No more Willie O'Dea. No more Michael Ring (I'm hearing a lack of women here, I'm sure there were annoying women too).

Here in Canada, the CBC current affairs stuff is pretty good. Particularly around teatime. And during the day they have great arts programming. And a great Internet-related show. And a show called Dark Arts, which is about healthcare, which is fantastic, hosted by a doctor who gives House a run for his money.

But in the morning.....

In the morning it is local. Lots of weird people from Musquodobit talking about pig roasts and the occasional 'news' item about a wind turbine that's going to spoil the view from Anne Murray's summer cottage.

There's a boy interviewer (who thinks he's Irish) and a girl host, who introduces the items but NEVER does an interview. I think she butters the toast while they're going on.

I often wonder how Aine Lawlor would cope if she'd washed up here.

Anyways, this morning, I hit the wrong button when the alarm went off and got onto the Dalhousie SU radio by mistake.

Flashpoints was on. Flashpoints is their current affairs program.

It focuses almost exclusively on the war in Iraq (and global warming). It talks about framing a lot. It explains the different sects in Iraq which is good because it means I don't have to plough through the actual newspaper articles in order to keep up with who is on the side of the workers and who is not.

This morning they were talking about the credit crunch and the continued bail out of the investment industry.

Socialism for the rich apparently (?!)

The guy with the beard (don't ask me how I know, I just did) kept repeating that phrase randomly in a triumphant tone.

This was while the woman was explaining that most of the investors were mom and pop pension funds (?!)

Then they urged everyone not to drink Starbucks coffee anymore because they don't pay their managers overtime.

And they do something weird with their tips that I was too sleepy to follow.

Time passed, spent talking about al-Sadr, that renowned hero of the Iraqi working class, when the host crowed that there were calls coming in about the Starbucks item.

Great, said mom and pop investment funds girl.

Two of the calls were pointing out that Starbucks was the only coffee chain in Canada to give part-time workers their health benefits and the third said that the tips were fine. Thank you very much.

Mom and pop investment fund girl (who may or may not be mom and pop funding her to go to Dal girl too) said that really the point was that everyone should get free health care.

Ehm, we do, don't we?

You are middle-aged when you find yourself shouting at the anarchists on the radio.

Also, when it is the day after you went to Rona and bought a toilet and a hand basin and considered that fun, it must be true.

Ah well, it was a good long run....

Okay I am sick of this now

Sick of it.

It snowed from 8.30am yesterday morning until 11pm and then it started again at 5am.

Himself had to go to work at midnight and he didn't get back until 11.10am, at which point I just handed over the frying pan with his breakfast in it because I had to go out.

Now it is 1.17pm and I am back, making my breakfast quietly because he is asleep.

And this is Himself's weekend off.

We have been doing this since November.

We have to do this; we have to try to get some sleep even though one of us is always getting up, or going to bed, or getting dressed, or getting a phone call from work, or trying to have a life with the sound muted; we have to drive up and down the province for work, for the kids, in snow and rain and sleet and hail and blowing snow and wind and more frigging sleet; we have to deal with wives and their lawyers and our lawyers and landlords and neighbours who don't work so they run around the apartment making noise all night, and supervisors who don't see why they should ask the person who's turn it is to plough snow to do it, and people who want to know when they're getting their Internet, and boilers and shitty equipment and twenty four hour shifts in the middle of bumfuck Nova Scotia, and we have to do the shopping and the laundry and the bill paying and the entertaining and all the things that people have to do all the time...

And we have to do it all with a friggin' foot of snow on the ground every three days.

I am FUCKING SICK OF THIS.

So now I will eat my breakfast and go out and shovel snow off the steps, and the yard, and the car and the path to the laundry and then I will do the shopping and the laundry and the housework with the sound muted and hopefully, at some point Himself will wake up.

Of course, I'll be tired then.

Bah!

No wonder I made no sense last night.

This is why I left Ireland

Well, there were a few other reasons, but this was the main one....


Jesus... will somebody tell everybody that it's over. And they should all just watch Jericho.

And imagine being old.


Gilmore to urge Labour to make itself relevant to voters again

STEPHEN COLLINS, Political Editor

THE LABOUR Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, is expected to call on his party today to change itself if it really wants the Irish people to entrust it with the task of changing the country in the 21st century.

Mr Gilmore is due to address a new Labour Party commission, established by a motion of the party conference last November.

The commission is charged with examining and reporting on all aspects of the party's organisation, campaigning and political activity and to make recommendations on the role which Labour should take in the modern Ireland.

The commission, chaired by Greg Sparks, who served as programme manager for Dick Spring when he was tánaiste between 1993 and 1997 will hold its first meeting in Dublin today.

There are more than 20 members on the commission, representing various areas of the Labour Party, including the parliamentary party, councillors, constituency organisations, Labour Youth and the trade unions.

The commission will hold a series of meetings with party members around the country in the coming months. It is due to report to the national executive committee in advance of the next party conference which is due to take place in late November.

Mr Gilmore will address the opening meeting of the commission today and it is expected to make a major address on the direction he wishes to see the party taking in the years ahead.
He is expected to encourage the party to present the Irish people with a clear and understandable statement of what it stands for in modern Ireland, not just in relation to the immediate concerns of today, but to Ireland as it will be between now and 2020, and indeed beyond.

Mr Gilmore has emphasised in the past that Labour's values of equality, solidarity, community, and democracy need to be expressed in the language of modern Ireland to make them relevant in the lives of ordinary people.

He is expected to stress that there is a need for the party to expand the meaning of the term "Labour" to go beyond the old image of a downtrodden proletariat and Labour as an interest group representing a particular form of paid manual employment.

Mr Gilmore will suggest that the term Labour today applies to those who work for themselves, as well as those who work for employers and was not confined to paid work, but applied to those who work at caring for the elderly, for children and for those with disabilities.

He is also expected to emphasise that while Labour is the party of public services that means it should be the party of the public who use them, as well as the public servants who produce them.
Similarly, while Labour was the party that emphasised rights it should also emphasise responsibilities.

While Labour had steadily up-dated many of its policy positions it had not projected that modernisation. While Ireland had grown and changed it had not been able to project that development to the public.

The Labour leader will say that having left behind the closed, authoritarian society of the past, and provided for a far greater measure of personal freedom, hard questions now needed to be asked about the society that we had created, and about the responsibility we all have for the kind of society we will bequeath to our children.

He will also refer to the hard choice that will have to be made as the halcyon days of the Celtic Tiger recede and tightening public finances forced a more exacting scrutiny of taxation and expenditure decisions

The novel is back on by the way

By which I mean that when I have time off I choose to spend it staring into the delicious middle distance, working through a particularly knotty part of the plot.

It's how I cope with a winter that arrived too early, bang on time, like he was awkward and early to a party, and then found alcohol and decided to stay until the last allotted moment, and then wouldn't get into the private ambulance, and eventually not even the one provided by the courts...


.... and then some...

That kind of a winter.

But I know from the Queen Mother and by grapevine from the Queen Dad that it was a hard winter in Ireland too.

I think

I may have fucked up the last post.

What I meant to say is that I love people who can blog in the snow.

But I'm in a state of relief really.

I will tell you all about it some day.

When something happens that's worth writing to you about.

There are some nights when Kentucky blue grass is all that will do.

And we have Beethoven's bi-centennial coming up next week.

When I imagine you listening to Beethoven, I always imagine that you have your glasses down at the end of your nose.

Facebook envy

Is anyone else suffering from it?

I surely am.

I find Facebook a great chore, but at the same time, some days, the reason I get up in the morning.

Where is Ken?

Is Joos near a silverback?

And what is that one that's always tanned and on a beach somewhere exotic doing, and why is she still following you around online being your friend....

And oh look, there's your husband's ex-wife's sister's husband's neice's friend.....

On your cousin's closest friend list....

Anyways...

I don't have brothers who have girlfriends/ spouses/ mates who like sisters...

And I still haven't figured out how to make friends on the Internet.

That aren't scary after a while.

Or else I move country....

Anyways, I don't have cheap flights anymore. Or rather, I removed myself so far from my life that I have to choose between instant gratification and home, which may or may not be a sign of growing up ...

But for me to read a blog post about a woman that I love who is in a place that I know all about, but where I never have been ...

... Having the time of her life, and then it snows...

... which is shit, I accept ...

... but hollow laughter....

Hollow laughter is pretty good actually.

Power off for Earth Hour boys and girls.

Let's all do something really useful.

The snow is still on the ground, but it must be Michelmas term by now

I actually took pictures of the snow tonight.

To show you that I am not messing.

And this is the worst year in seven.

That's what really scares me.

It's only a seven year cycle.

Oh well, as one gets older, one has to live dangerously.

However that may manifest itself.

Happy Easter to everyone who knows what Michelmas means.

Sunshine.

Misery

I have spent ALL DAY trying to get through to the Leonard Cohen ticket line.

All I get is the engaged tone.

St. Patrick's Day

They are discussing Paddy's Day and all things Irish on CBC at the moment.

So they are interviewing Irish pub managers of course.

The interviewer just asked a guy 'what's the difference between SPD in Ireland and in Canada?'

'Oh, SPD is a holy day of obligation in Ireland. You usen't not be able to get a drink on SPD.'

I would have pointed out that it doesn't snow in Ireland on SPD, whereas in Canada it usually signals that big March storm that marks the end of the winter. We are looking at 35 cm this weekend, hooray not.

I wonder how many listeners know what a holy day of obligation means?

Really though, I am scratching my head at the enthusiasm with which Canadians approach SPD.

I mean, we don't celebrate Ukranian Day, despite the large Ukranian population in Alberta.

And Ukranians like to drink just as much as the next Irish man.

And Ukranians would probably know what a Holy Day of Obligation is.

'Tis strange.

But not to be sniffed at.

At one with the universe. Finally.

So it snowed again last night. Well over six inches of meringue-like (I have tried to spell this word six times and nothing looks right) fluffy egg-white snow.

The trees were sooooo beautiful. Just covered in white, blueish-tinged in the new moon light.

And when I left work tonight it was almost gone.

I was too hot in my snow boots. So I wore my stilletoes home and didn't fall on my ass once.

Maybe if I am one with the weather it will become one with me and stop snowing.

We didn't get the kids for March break.

SWWBMF called a few weeks back and said she needed a break.

Could we take the kids?

Sure.

I booked the time off.

Come time to get the kids, SWWBMF had changed her mind.

Lucky I have an understanding work environment.

I should start charging for my stories about why I am constantly changing my leave arrangements.

Anyways, we didn't bother to complain.

Maybe if we become one with the universe of SWWBMF the universe of SWWBMF would stop spinning.

I am going to bet myself the pair of shoes I won recently and a nice new top that it will stop snowing first.

Going to the island for the Paddy's Day party.

Better get my party piece ready.

Not about chirpy things so much as horny screaming ones

While we're on the subject of birds, The Old Man of the Sea, or Himself as he's usually referred to, tells me that he knows when spring's-a-comin' because the sea gulls sound different.

Apparently their calls change and sound all horny in the springtime.

Queenie, raised in an inland place where seagulls in the sky were so rare that the sight of them meant BIG WEATHER TROUBLE in the Irish Sea, thinks they sound the same all year round, but Himself knows a horny gull when he hears one.

The cry changed about a week ago, if you're at all interested in the sexual practices of Larus ridibundus, so spring's-a-comin'.

Even though the weatherman was quoted in the paper this week as saying he wouldn't put his snow shovel away until May, if he were him.

The level of nuance in the universe that Himself can read always amazes me.

Of course, my ability to remember to pay the bills on time every month amazes him.

It's all about what you're good at.

However, increasingly I feel I have gotten the shitty end of the talent stick.

I want to be able to sit on the couch and feel a small gust come in the sitting room window, just for a moment, and predict what time it's going to snow.

I want to be able to figure out what everyone on the island will be doing at the weekend, by the direction of the wind on Thursday.

I want to know what direction I am driving in the city. At all times.

Oh wait, that's right, I can now.

I have a new car.

Well a new to me car.

It has a compass in it.

I R vurry pleased with my new car.

Sorry, our new car.

A little brother for Albert.

Well, a honkin' big red 4WD brother.

Don't tell any of my green friends.

I called him The Beast.

I adore driving him. I don't care what the snotty bitch in the Prius mouthed at me the other day.

It's MY ROAD.

I'm so buying this bumper sticker.

Himself wants to put a lift kit in it. And he keeps checking out strange chrome objects online.

I think not. I don't know what a lift kit is, but it sounds too white trash even for me.

Chirpy things

While I was waiting for the coffee to drip into the coffee pot, I texted our mutual friend and told him about the door.

You went all Queenie on the door, did you, he replied. Go watch Eastern Promise, it'll make you feel better you know.

It's nice to know I'm an adjective to some people.

It's nice to know some people remember the little things about me.

That's the problem with the winter here. It's very isolating. Everyone just bunkers up for a couple of months and doesn't really go out.

So by week fourteen you just want to kill someone.

Then you wake up one morning and go outside and there it is....

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

OhMYGoD the birds are back! THE BIRDS ARE BACK!! HIMSELF, HIMSELF, WAKE UP DUDE, THE BIRDS ARE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cue delighted crazy dance around the apartment as Himself confirms that yes, he too can hear the chirping so it is not in Queenie's head.

Then, later that day, it snows about half a foot.

So not only are you now having another fit because it is SNOWING AGAIN, but now you are freaking out about the poor ickle wickle chirpy birds freezing to death.

Himself assures me they won't but he can't provide any detailed information on exactly why that is.

So every morning starts with a straining out the window, just to make sure it's still there.

chirp, chirp, chirp.

Any chance of another blogpost?

I just have to put on another pot of coffee first.

I don't know whether to be annoyed or pleased when I get these requests. I mean, it's a full life, lying around watching the weather channel and moaning about how crap and meaningless the winter months are. I don't have time to be typing chirpy reports on how my thirties are going. Having said that, the fact that anyone actually reads this stuff is mildly reassuring: I may be slowly losing my mind, but I can apparently still describe it in reasonably interesting ways.

Someone mailed me the other day to say they had read my whole blog.

In one day.

They have that type of job, apparently.

In the interest of seeing what that would look like, I flicked back a bit.

The shame.....
Self-Indulgent wittering R US

Nevermind.
It's my self-indulgent wittering.

Anyways, I will put the coffee on now. And think about something chirpy to write about.

Women's Day how are ya

First of all, let me wish all the women in my life a very happy International Women's Day, particularly those of you who don't get to have a Mother's Day or a Valentine's Day (which is hugely over-rated anyways, IWD is much better I think).

I told Himself the other day that Saturday would be IWD and due to the fact that I have banned Valentine's Day flowers, I would like some flowers on Saturday (which he will have forgotten by now, having the memory of a guppie fish these days), and he said 'International Women's Day, eh? When's International Men's Day?'

I replied that the other 365 days of this year are IMD and he was not to be such a smartass on Saturday if he knew what was best for him.

He didn't think that was fair.

He should try having a womb.

Anyways, he's not even here to bring me breakfast in bed this morning because he was up at six am and gone off to do a First Aid course before I could come to enough to say 'FLOWERS!!!'

Then he has to go and fix a boiler or something. Because he has to drive it to Pictou County next week to boil stuff at a powerplant or something equally hellish-sounding.

But he's still going to be back in time to take me out tonight.

Yeah.

I won't be passing out from holding my breath today for sure.

He will try his damnedest to take me out tonight though, because he was at the receiving end of my annual 'when is the effing winter going to end' fit this week. So obviously, I need to be brought out to a place where there are other people and waiters and musicians and all the trappings of civilised existence before I gnaw my restraints off and go for him again.

It's been a bad winter.

WhaddoImean, been.

It's still winter for twelve more days.

I met a friend on the street the other day. He said 'how are you doing?' I did the Nova Scotia winter blues shuffle, 'hmmm, you know', pained smile, looking at the ground.

Me too, he said. He said he asked a mutual friend (who is the most Irish Canadian Irish person I have ever met) the other day, if he was in that mood.

Our mutual friend said: 'where I want to kill someone, just to watch them die? Yep.'

That sort of sums it up for me.

My friend said 'everyone's in such a bad mood, we should just put everyone in a room, get them all roaring drunk and just have a big fight, get it all out of our system'.

I suddenly realised that's why we have Paddy's Day in March. Unfortunately, I have to go to work on SPD this year.

You gotta take your opportunities where you can find them.

Last night I came home to find I had locked myself out and as Himself was up to his eyes in boilering stuff for the foreseeable, I squeezed out through my neighbours exit hatch, climbed down the fire escape and ripped our fire door off its hinges with my bare hands to get in.

Boy did that feel good.

After the feeling came back into my fingers.

Nepotism - when do I get my turn?

Dear Baz:

You're my brother and you write for the Guardian.

I see they are giving out free paid blogging trips to the Far East to people who are related to people who write for the Guardian.

That's me, dude!

I am a little confused though, do I have to have written for Skins to qualify for the trip?

Maybe you could just lie and tell them that I have.

I have read a lot of travel books though.

Anyways, I'd quite like a three month trip to Skull Island or Craggy Island or Cicely, Alaska, or the Yukon maybe, anywhere really where there's no chance of meeting hordes of aviator-wearing, skinny jeaned yoof.

Thanks, Baz, I owe you one.

Your sister Queenie

xx

P.S. I will still respect the Guardian if I get this gig.

P.P.S. Did they fire that idiot travel editor yet? Or was it his boss made him do it?

P.P.P.S. If they didn't, maybe you could remind him - first rule of the hole is, put the shovel down.

P.P.P.S. Don't tell the Queen Parents, they're dead set against nepotism.

Just slow the hell down, guys

Queenie drove 750 kilometres yesterday. It was a long drive, interspaced with meetings, but a long drive in solitude. A long drive in solitude generally results in a long think.

Yesterday was a long drive in varying winter driving conditions - terrifying black ice conditions in complete darkness along the airport highway, a long, slow dawn up towards Truro, the brightening sky streaming rose pink shadows onto the snow covered landscape, more black ice, then wind and blowing snow on the hills near Pictou, passing an accident near Exit 21, a woman sitting weeping in her car as the police try to pull her out of a snowbank.

I do this driving because I live here now and I have to learn. I don't take any risks and today I am not driving to Amherst because the forecast is bad and Himself said no.

I think that Himself is a little protective of me driving and I probably would have made it, but the deal is that if Himself says no I don't go.

Normally I don't pay much attention to other people's views on stuff or let other people dictate my actions, but in this case if I ignore his request and travel, he would spend all day worrying about me and waiting for text messages to say that I have reached pre-agreed milestones safely.

I suppose part of loving someone involves compromise so they don't spend their day worrying about you for no reason apart from the fact that you are a stubborn git who takes work too seriously.

Commitment to work = good; injury or death because of it = egotistical stupidity.

Also, it is an intelligent choice to listen to the advice of a local who drives for a living and who is spending the winter clearing snow so that people can drive safely, so who knows what he is talking about.

Also it is the anniversary of the day I could have died on the same road while a passenger in another vehicle. With a much more experienced driver.

The portents were all telling me the same thing.

But yesterday was different as the forecast was progressively better rather than worse.

Finally, around nine am, brilliant sunshine emerged to etch the landscape onto my eye all through Guysborough County. The sunshine made it easier to go off-highway onto snow-covered roads into Sherbrooke, warmed up the road during a slippery drive along the riverbank to my last meeting, and finally, I turned for home, driving three hours into a deep orange sunset along the Eastern Shore. So bright I couldn't see the winding road.

A lotta scary moments. A lotta impatient drivers overtaking me when they shouldn't have.

A lotta thinking.

Life is so precious. Why are people in such a hurry? Why do people insist on taking such risks? Do they not stop to think about the cost of a mistake in these circumstances?

What about my life? Do they have the right to make that decision if it affects me?

I don't think so.

I don't think they have the right to make the choice for themselves, because everyone has someone who is worrying about them on the road somewhere.

I want to pay special tribute to the nice driver from Seaboard's who overtook me at 160kph near the airport in complete darkness, with black ice, zero visibility and blowing snow from the lake.

Thanks dude.

Your backwash sprayed my mirror with icy slush that my wipers couldn't get rid of.

I had to pull over on the AIRPORT HIGHWAY where nobody dares to pull off because the lanes are so confusing.

I had to spend three minutes finding the stupid hazard lights in the stupid dark in the stupid hire car, praying nobody would thump into me.

I had to get out of the car in minus 12 temperatures ON THE HIGHWAY IN THE DARK and clean my windshield off with my lunchbag because the cleaner brush couldn't get the crud off my car, it was so encrusted with the oily dirt from your badly kept wheels.

I had to sit back into the car with the heater on ROAR for five minutes so I could actually feel my foot enough to put it back on the accelerator.

I had to talk myself into pulling back out onto the road. "Queenie, you can't spend the rest of your life on the highway, so you may as well go somewhere there is coffee at least."

Who the hell do you think you are?

And thanks to the Eisener driver who did the same thing about twenty miles later.

Thanks to the companies that cut back on drivers so that these guys face impossible deadlines and consequently do this to other people.

And thanks to the people who have 'surveillance cameras' on that highway that everyone knows are empty so that they don't have to pay cops to put up speed traps.

I hate the airport highway.

Ironically, it is the Veterans Highway. A big sign at either end solemnly says: Lest we forget.

It should be renamed, Lest we be five minutes late.

As I mentioned, I spent time thinking about the choices people make.

Pretty dark thinking all round all day, but that was because I spent most of the day thinking about the way loss is forced on some people.

Life is always precious but sometimes you lose people you just shouldn't lose yet. I spent a lotta time yesterday thinking about one such person, a neighbour who passed away a few weeks ago. I have not been thinking about her death much, because I still can't believe she is gone. I cannot believe that her family have to go through this loss and go through it without her.

She was such a force of life. She literally was a sunbeam. Her smile was the epicentre of that sunbeam. Every picture I have of her in my head, pictures stretching back thirty four years, to when I was a toddler and she was about seven, are of her smiling.

Even yesterday, with all day to think about it, coming to terms with the fact that she is gone on such a beautiful beautiful beautiful day was almost impossible.

Maybe she was somewhere in the cosmos, helping the dawn turn the snow rose pink with her smile ...

Maybe ...

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,

I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.

Snow talk

There's no business, like snow business, like no business I know.....

We are in the snow business in our house these days.

It's kinda counter-intuitive but.

Normally when it snows it's all, hooray, snow, let's stay inside and watch tv and eat crap.

But now, I get to do that and Himself has to go out and plough the stuff away.

For which he gets paid. Which is good.

But which tends to happen at midnight and on weekends.

Not so good.

But I am becoming expert in all things snow-like.

Flurrie: A snow flurry is a snow fall of impossible to predict magnitude. For example, last night flurries result in almost a foot of the stuff being dumped on us. Previously, flurries used to mean a couple of cms.

Blowin' snow: Blowing snow means Himself will call you on your cell and order you back to Halifax when you're supposed to be going to Cape Breton. Thankfully too, because as I was driving down the hill to the carpark next to the office, I put my foot gently on the brake to stop the car.

AND IT DIDN'T.

hahahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Not nice.

Snow drift: The stuff the weather puts in the middle of the highway to stop you from travelling over to the wrong side when you are in a snow-induced spin.

Snow day: day off when it is snowing. Queenie has had one since she moved to Canada. One is not enough for all the snow she has had to put up with.

Grammys, ECMAs, and other stuff

So Amy won the Grammys.

So what. We had the East Coast Music Awards on the same night in the Maritimes.

Much more important.

Joel Plaskett Emergency won all the prizes for a mediocre album about an ashtray.

Poor Wintersleep didn't win anything, despite the fact that the music journalist in town loves them.

Boo fucking hoo.

Reminds me so much of Ireland in the eighties when U2 won all the prizes.

Except of course, I liked U2.

I like neither of these acts.

God I wish I was somewhere where you could go to a gig in a heated venue that started before eleven.

More importantly, The Daily News is closing down today.

That is bad.

How can you have a first rate city with one newspaper?

Apparently, the Greater Halifax Partnership have taken to referring to Halifax as 'the new Dublin'.

Now there's a scary thought.

That would put me living beside the Red Cow Inn, where people get shot.

Oh, that's right, I live near Spryfield, where, er, people get shot.

But only sometimes.

Not as often as when I lived in Dublin.

Halifax is not the new Dublin.

Halifax is the old Dublin.

That's why I like Halifax.

Like the old Dublin, Halifax is a former colonial capital that has gone to seed due to the pull factor of Ontario and Alberta. Unlike Dublin, it is not the entry point to the lucrative EMEA markets and it doesn't have a dodgy tax break system that facilitates MNCs to set up shop here.

Its best hope is to become the Florida of the north.

We should send a flotilla of boats to Cuba and load up anyone interesting (shouldn't be too difficult, everyone here knows the way to Cuba), and then set the town on fire with a salsa beat.

Plus we'd have all those trained Cuban healthcare professionals to fill the jobs we will need filled.

(Apologies to Cubans by the way, I am not being insensitive to your culture, I am merely taking the piss out of the GHP)

Hey, we'd have fun at next year's ECMAs.

Incoming February bleughs alert.

May the existential crisis and unconnected ramblings time of the year begin.

Snowbound so there's no excuse

I have been putting off writing in this blog for a while now. But a combination of the never-ending snow and a half-day with nothing to do, apart from shovel snow, means that really I should write on my blog today.

Sigh.

What to write about...

I see Macca and Heather are back in court for their divorce.

I am betting myself a new pair of shoes that Macca and Heather will be divorced before Himself and She Who Would be Married Forever.

Even though Himself and SWWBMF have been at it since 2004 and they've only been at it since 2006.

It constantly brings this famous case to mind:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on.

This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises.

Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.

The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse (or dirt bike, as we say in today's world) when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse (or Harley), and trotted away into the other world.

Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.

Nevermind, as the delightful Kanye says, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

And of course disposing of the copious output from the lawyers is great for adding texture to the compost bin.

It's the little people who have to live in Bleak House I worry about.

The Joker will rule

Did I say The Joker?

I must have meant Batman.

Went to see I am Legend last night.

Yawn.

Dog lovers should avoid this film.

However, we did see a trailer for Batman: The Dark Knight.

This movie will be all about the Joker.

Brilliant characterisation, brilliant accent - so brilliant, we didn't even notice who was playing Batman.

Such a pity Mr. Ledger won't be around to hear the praise.

The things your friends find for you to do...

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Queenie has finally sorted out the parameters of the 2007 mix for Inmyday.

Not that she was under any pressure, GOD NO, cds popping into the mail box every evening from people who have jobs AND children is not PRESSURE.

Nosireebob.

It just took a while to organise the potential tracks on the iTunes.

Finally, she did a smart list that was tracks added after 01/01/2007 and tracks added before 01/01/2008.

That only took a month to figure out.

Then she had to get the names of the tracks, having done something stupid to the iTunes so that it wouldn't 'get track names' for her. Everytime she tried it sent her a stupid message saying unable to connect to iTunes.

WTF?

I thought the whole point of iTunes and iPods etc was to force you to buy music.

With your shiny new Canaydyan credit card.

Nope.

The point is to make Queenie get in tune with her technology.

At least it's only every three years.

So, three hours, a disk defragmentation, the wholesale clear out of her hard disk and a download of the latest version of iTunes update later, we are ready to begin....

... I was just downloading Version 7.6 of iTunes when the door opened and the Himself who was supposed to be working till midnight walked in.

Shit.

No dinner (why bother with dinner when it's Tuesday, you've had a stressful day wowing the masses, there's an open bottle of wine, and no Himself).

Thankfully Himself is the kind of Himself who sees the lack of dinner on the table as an opportunity to cook dinner for the woman he loves.

He even washed a wine glass for me.

What did I do in a past life to deserve this man?

I must have brokered the peace treaty between the Chinese and the Parthians in the eleventh centurey, or something equally major.

Anyways, just as we were eating dinner, the phone rang and it was the weather saying, it's snowing again, come back to work, so off Himself went again until midnight so I will try to get this done.

Inmyday Music 2007 - Queenie's cd.

Well, I have 5.26 GB to choose from, but there are some issues.

Some of it I stole from Mr. Monkey's laptop when he was over during the summer.

I don't know if that counts.

Also, I spent a lot of this year trying to rebalance the emphasis on the iTunes from plinkity plink shite that Queenie listens to in favour of a little cock rock for Himself.

When we're having our Friday night chats we always end up having an argument about whether or not cock rock is a valid music genre.

Yes it is.

Cock rock is rock played by a band with a guitarist who plays with his guitar resting on his enormous cock, sung by a singer who sings while squeezing his equally enormous cock.

Yes it is.

So we will have some CR on the cd.

It's good for the soul, really it is.

But we'll start off mellow.

1. Cowboy Junkies, a lovely mellow cover of The Way I feel, from the Gordon Lightfoot tribute album, Beautiful.

In celebration of the fact that I am now supposed to be okay about GL.

Buy the album.

It rocks.

2. Yaser Habeeb, Elana.

From a $1 album I got at a yard sale, called Sahara Lounge. Vurry smooood.....

And cos I love yard sales.

3. Elliot Smith, Angel in the Snow.

'Cause I'm going out with one.

Ahhhhhhh...

Also, this is my most played song this year, with a whopping 27 plays according to the software that monitors your darkest moods and silliest parties.

The reason I play it so much is because I just think the guitar riff is the sweetest little complicated but simple little riff I've ever heard.

4. Burial, Archangel

This is my favourite album of 2007.

I found it on eMusic one day when I was really desperate to spend my 30 buys, it being the end of the month. As I mentioned in an earlier post, every song on this album reminds me of a band I used to listen to in the eighties. I wanted to put the whole album on the playlist, but I didn't for reasons of DE RULES (which took up about 37 emails - I love inmyday because we can have 76 emails about music and 3 about war on the same day. Or vice versa. Depending)

I put Archangel on because a) it is about angels, b) it is 5 star rated, and c) it is my most played 5 star on the album (see I did pay some attention to DE RULES).

5. Jimmi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

This was my first purchase in the attempt to balance the music collection. It didn't go down particularly well. It's not cock rocky enough, apparently.

I think it's pretty good.

And he wore very tight trousers.

Isn't it very similar to Archangel in a weird slowed down speeded up kinda way?!

6. Led Zeppelin, Whole Lotta Love

HOORAH!!!!!!!!!! COOOOOOOOOOOCK RAAAAAAAAAAAWK!

You need coolin'! de dum DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM DE DUM!

What an opening line!

On Friday nights, the cock rock argument usually stems from the 'if I were to walk down an aisle at some point in time, what would be the song' argument.

In a very frightening way, this CANNOT be dislodged from the top five.

Angels have a stubborn side to them.

I need someone to send me a cd of 'potential walk down the aisle songs if they were ever to be needed ever' real soon.

Otherwise the Queen Dad could be in a world of pain some day.

7. Radiohead, Weird Fishes, Arpeggio

This is the one I want.

It's Radiohead.

I can't do it to anything else.

This was a question on Canada's smartest people quiz Sunday night. Which band sold their album for what you can afford last year?

WTF? It's in the shops now.

That wasn't part of the deal, lads.

Anyways, let's stop for a moment and listen to the SONG OF 2007.




By the way, Zoom are flying to Nova Scotia from Belfast from the end of June to the end of September this year. Please form an orderly queue if you wish to recommend a particular week, bearing in mind that August and September are the best months. Also bearing in mind that Electric Picnic is on during Labour weekend so I need to know soon if people want to do both.

8. Patrick Watson, Drifters

I only discovered this guy this year. Actually this was the year of Watson, Cat Power, Elliot Smith and Erik Wollos. Four artists I had never heard of but am very glad that I have now, as they formed the spine of my listening.

Plus Tom Waits, as Mike, the neighbour who chose to abandon us, as did Kate and the kids and the dogs, gave me the complete works this summer.

Talk about giving a girl a doorway back to 1989....

9. Erik Wollo, Totem

I like this song, because it reminds me of our key joint learning pathway last year, which was a journey into the Aboriginal American experience. 2007 will be a key year in the Canadian history of dealing with 'the Aboriginal question' I think.

Many things happened.

Caledonia. The riots in the summer. The tension between the old guard, the recognised leaders, and the younger leaders coming up, who are sick of the same old same old.

Jim Prentice. Minister of Indian Affairs. A man who seemed to get it, but because he was competent (and ambitious I assume), he got moved to Industry. With disastrous results.

Payments for the industrial schools. Long conversations on the radio about how large cheques would result in drunkenness on reservations. And now everytime there is an accident, that's the reason.

The abandonment of the historic Kelowna Accord signed by the previous governments, along with everything else that was signed by them.

In the absence of being able to do anything, we watched a lot of movies on the issue and read some books.

I even read Germs, Guns and Steel.

I still don't get it.

10. Mavis Staples, Down in Missippi

For Barack. The day after MLK day.

God love him.

This was a great find. Staples was one of the singers that associated with MLK. Ry Cooder has rerecorded her hits, you can hear him in the background.

This is why I like Canada.

They might not get their own inequities.

But by God, they get the inequities in YankeeLand.

Ohyessirreebobtheydo.

11. Cat Power, Keep on Running

Because you have to, don't you.

Now we head into the difficult last couple of songs part of the cd.

There are about seven in the playlist, so I will have to cull...

Give me about twenty minutes to figure out what to delete and what to keep in and what order to put them in, etc.

Time passes.....

12. Okkervil River, Love to a Monster

Okkervil River beat Spoon, which is probably not right.

But it's past my bedtime.

And it's only Tuesday.

13. John Lee Hooker, Let's go out tonight

This is the first cd that Himself chose, bought and added to the online collection.

So let's stay in and listen to it.

Now, all I have to do is go buy enough cds to burn, envelopes, stamps, etc.

This weekend. I will.

Anyone else who wants one let me know.

I will burn twenty copies.

Note to self: I have already set up 2008's smart list.

I ain't going through all this again.

Night.
xx

Let the crapness begin (and may I learn to embrace it)

So, it's Friday afternoon and there is a rainstorm outside in which Himself is travelling in Albert to the Island for the weekend. Queenie is home alone apart from the wretched bacterium that is ravaging her bronchial tubes, making her sweat and cough and wheeze and pant in a shallow manner reminiscent of a hot dog (as in sweltering animal, not weiner) due to the pain in her chest when she breathes.

No doubt it is the teenage mutant cousin of the bacterium that tried to fell her over Christmas and failed.

It is not going to fail this weekend.

I am felled.

Alone I sit, in layers of Himself's comfiest fleece jumpers and socks (at least they didn't abandon me), the last bag of Tayto's in the house lying empty on the desk beside the laptop, the weekend disappearing in a haze of ice-white rain and greenish-yellow phlegm.

Think positive, Queenie, think positive.

Positive Thought No. 1
Himself forgot to bring back the dvds so I can watch Eastern Promises again and watch the Viggo running naked round a Turkish bath knifing Russian mobsters scene as many times as I like without any jealous sulking going on in the kitchen.

Himself accidentally on purpose realised he needed my full attention for the duration of the scene the first time I watched the movie.

I should never have told him the only competition in the world for my affections he needs to ever worry about is VM.

The fact that he appears to take the threat somewhat seriously is of course the best form of defence he could muster.

Bless him. He knows me so well.

Positive Thought No. 2
I have a Creme Egg I forgot to eat yesterday.

I was in my local Needs Convenience Store the other day buying Creme Eggs and I remarked to the guy behind the counter that he must hate Creme Egg season because they are so difficult to swipe with the price reader, being all wrapped in crinkly paper.

He looked at me in a kind of vaguely joyous way when I said it because I think he thought that he was the problem.

The store stank of weed, d'ya see.

Positive Thought No. 3
I have already done the doctor thing and gotten the kick ass antibiotics so I am to be better by Sunday and I don't have to figure out how to get to the doctors in the freezing rain.

Not that I didn't appreciate the antibiotics I got at Christmas.

Positive Thought No. 4
I remembered to go to the ATM, so if I ever feel the inclination to eat food that is not crisps or chocolate, I can just call the Chinese. Or the gourmet pizza place.

Positive Thought No. 5
Sick people can't do housework. It's best if they just lie around and read books and write in their blog.

How many people do you meet in the course of a lifetime?

I often see people in the street who remind me of people I had forgotten I knew.

Today, I was standing at the bus stop when a Germanic-looking woman with long blonde hair, a crocheted cloche and a big back pack walked past. I immediately thought of a German woman I knew in Trinity who looked and dressed the same.

I couldn't remember her name. And when I tried to trace the memory back through other people, I couldn't remember their names either.

Then I shrugged it off - currently I am meeting so many new people, due to a new job, that I am obviously deleting old records.

But then I got to thinking... how many people does the average person meet in his or her lifetime?

Yahoo questions didn't know.

Google didn't know.

Wiki didn't know.

Say you took an average of one person a day (or is that too few? some days I meet twenty people and some days none, so I'd say one or two).

Say two people a day. Because of my lifestyle and profession.

By meet I mean introduced to. Had at least three sentences of dialogue with.

Multiply that by the days in your life when you're conscious of meeting people, so in my case that would be 34 years X 365 days + 8 Leap Year days = 4,529,650 days X 2 people.

That's 9,059,300 so far.

Maybe just one.

Even if it's just one - that's 4.5 million people.

That's the population of Ireland.

No wonder I had to move to Canada!

I really should stop worrying what people think of me.

They're far too busy trying to remember everyone's name!

When to say stop

Those of you who know Queenie know that I can put up with a lot of crap from people.

Particularly if they are of the type who have to live on welfare for a while, or even forever, for whatever reason. They get enough crap from the system, they shouldn't get any from me.

But there are two things that can happen that tap into a righteously vicious side of me that I really don't like.

One is if I catch them stealing from me.

The other is if they try to get me to waste energy for their convenience.

So the Neighbour and the Lover are with child.

I am happy for them, really I am.

I'm glad all the shrieking we have to listen to paid off.

So I got a long note telling me to put the heat on Full all day and all night from now on because of the pregnancy and the sore back and the other child who comes to visit. By some freakish twist of fate, her heating is controlled from our apartment's zone.

Because good neighbours help each other out.

And if I was too hot I could open a window, which would be nice.

NICE?!

Christ I am so mad...

We are so hot now that we have three windows open - in Canada in January - and still the place is like an oven all the time.

And all that oil is just blowing out the window into the atmosphere.

Gaaaaah!

I thought being pregnant made your internal core warmer?

Say Hello Wave Goodbye

Well, there was a trip undertaken at the speed of light if ever there was one.

Months and weeks spent thinking about going home and now I'm back already.

I had to clear a whole shelf on the bookcase for all the books that Santy brought me this year. And somehow I have managed to bring home two copies of Colin Thubron's In the Shadow of the Silk Road, so apologies to whoever I accidentally stole a copy from.

You may have it back upon receipt of proof that you actually own it and care about it.

Nearly everything made it back to Nova Scotia in one piece except for a lovely sculpture that Eileen and Stevo gave me that has one little chip in it. It will be lovingly fixed as soon as I get my hands on some superglue.

Of course I forgot Andrew and Myles' birthdays as usual.

Happy Birthday guys.

Off to cook supper now and shall resume blogging later.

It's started again.

The random need to sob.

FFS.

Well only three point five days to holidays and nothing done.

Nothing.

Of course, Scotiabank didn't help.

Scotiabank.

The bank that likes to say 'fuck off you presumptuous little immigrant, coming here stealing our jobs and men, and then on top of that, expecting twenty first century banking procedures.'

The new green Grinch

I was reading an article in The Globe and Mail the other day about the new green grinch, who is a nasty type of new person stalking the planet, stealing Christmas from everyone else by moaning about consumerism and packaging and waste, etc.

Ahaaaa, Queenie thought, so that's what I am!!

I knew there'd be a label for it somewhere.

My grinchiness is deeper than my greenness however. My greenness is just a mask for a far deeper flaw.

I am just a grinch at heart.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

The Queen Dad texted me this week.

'Don't buy me a Christmas present. I am not buying any this year. Dad'

Okey dokey.

Firstly, I am flying home to be with you for Christmas, oh grinchmeister, so that's your flippin' present.

I'm sure he'd come up with some smart ass reply to that if he actually read my blog.

Secondly, if he had thought his daughter's grinchiness through correctly, he would have known that I have already bought the Queen Dad his Christmas present, so that I could read it before I had to wrap it.

Which is what I always do.

And furthermore, he would have guessed that I got it in Doull's.

Which is even grinchier.

It being the second hand book store par excellence in Halifax.

But actually, I bought it there because I'll never find it again.

It being a hard to find copy of the first novel by one of our favourites. And Doull's being a place that's hard to find books in. Despite it being a bookstore.

But that's okay.

I'll just keep it.

Or give it to someone else.

Who doesn't even like this writer.

This is my point.

I hate buying Christmas presents.

Unless I wake up one morning and realise that I have thought of the perfect present and then I have to go out and hunt it down.

Then I love Christmas shopping.

But that day when you have to head out into the cold with a list of people and NO FRIGGIN' IDEA what to buy any of them.....

I hate that.

So I have been staring at my list for what seems like forever. Trying to think of the right present.

And I had only managed to buy two. Two spectacularly correct presents for the people for whom they were purchased.

I was really proud of both of them.

And one of them doesn't want it now.

I hate Christmas shopping.

One of the columnists in The Coast was talking about how difficult it was for her this year, because she's having 'a year of not buying anything new', so she has to make all her gifts.

It got me thinking.

I was thinking of trying a year of not buying anything new.

I discussed it with Himself last night.

'Dude, I think we should do a year of not buying anything new, what do you think?'

Himself was turning over potatoes from the new bag of PEI roosters, trying to find the best two bakers for supper, so he wasn't really concentrating.

'Well, what do you mean?'

'Well, we don't buy anything new for a year. Apart from food. And liquor. So if we need something we have to find it second-hand. And then we help save the planet.'

'But that's what we do normally, isn't it?'

I considered this. Having had the finances relatively stable for a while, I had noticed that my purchasing of never used items had crept up a little. Particularly with regard to clothes.

And shoes.

When I got my new job I treated myself to two pairs of the cutest damned shoes in the world. As a reward for all my hard work.

Well, we buy new clothes.

I don't.

Yes you do.

Only when you make me, and I have enough now to do me for three years.

I voiced the opinion then that maybe I should stop buying new clothes.

But women have to buy new clothes. So they'll look nice.

Don't you just love this guy!

And he's right. We engage in very little consumption.

So maybe I'm as green grinch as it gets.

But I still have to do the Christmas shopping.

Better go get ready.

The wrong end of the schtick

So some poor pretty Irish girl who wanted to be a celebrity so much she became one of those famous for being famous people took too much cocaine and died.

Along with the other two people who took too much cocaine at a twenty first party in Waterford a few weeks back, and died this week.

And apparently some actor called Tom Murphy earlier this year (I hope it's not the Tom Murphy I know), who died of an overdose.

Not to mention all the non-famous for dying of cocaine overdosing people who will die this year.

Shouldn't we be talking about who sold them the frickin' cocaine, instead of wondering what it all means for the dying embers of the tiger?

Mr. Newspaperman?

The end of the beginning

From Saturday

That's what today feels like.

Last night I went downstairs for supper with my neighbour. Himself stayed home as he thought it was going to snow and he would have to run a snow plough in the middle of the night. So he wanted to get some sleep.


Sleep has been in short supply in this house for a bit.


Queenie is a little concerned that when she gets to Ireland all she and Himself will want to do is sleep for two weeks.


Anyways, Queenie got home about one and was in a lovely deep sleep when the Snow Plough Cell from Hell rang loudly and Himself fell out of bed to answer it.


Wrong number.

Ah well.


Himself got up at four anyways and went to do his Snicking (something to do with ice and salt and carparks).

Isn't it FANTASTIC that November is over and it's December today.


December's exciting news is that Queenie has to work out her notice in the Tree House for two weeks, then start her new job, then go to Ireland for two weeks.

Today, Thursday

Well, it stopped snowing eventually on Monday and Himself got home eventually around midnight, and then had to go back in to work four hours later, but not before I told him that I had watched The National and it said it would be the worst winter in fourteen years or something equally horrible, so I guess this will be the winter of not enough sleep.

At least I just get woken up and can go back to sleep. He's the one who has to get up and go out in the freezing cold at four am.

I am definitely getting the better half of the deal.

Speaking of terrible news on the radio, CBC are talking about a longitudinal study this morning, undertaken in the States. Apparently if you get laid off when you're in your forties your life expectation is reduced by a number of years.

Due to the stress of financial and emotional meltdown.

Well, there's a big surprise.

I wonder, if you have the same kind of meltdown due to the breakdown of your marriage with consequent poverty and emotional stress, whether the same results will ensue.

Another study on the radio news this morning says that if you have a big ass it doesn't matter so long as you are fit. It's is only a big belly that is a problem.

Apparently.

I spend my time wondering who sponsors these studies.

The belly-reducing stretch-o-rope people this morning, no doubt.

Anyways, Queenie is not worried about her life expectancy, or her health, or anything at the moment.

This month marks the end of the beginning of the Canada adventure.

Roll on the middle bit.

May it be taut and muscular and life-enhancing!

Andrew's an Auld Dog

Andrew's a stranger in a not-very-strange land. He's been living in London for just over two years now, and recently took the quite-rare decision to stop letting things slide and set up a time by which he'll start talks about talks about growing up.

I've learned later than I should have that form is not content - just because what someone is saying to you now has the same informational payload as what they might have said before, it doesn't mean they're just repeating themselves.

I've learned that an interest in what's going on and a willingness to lend a hand will get you pretty far into any scene, but those things plus really memorable hair will get you further. I haven't learned what happens when I go back to the usual, or how much I'm worried that, Samson like, the hair is the star.

I've learned that you don't need to have a perfect match with a girl before making a move - a lesson that the rest of the human race learned not long after the one about how if you leave these gourds out in the sun, they taste FANTASTIC. Then again, I've also learned that an honest heart and simple desire will get you so far, but not compared with that plus three pints of cider in you.

I've learned that you have no idea what's happening until it's passed: my best friend the first year I was here, I met by going out to a gig. The reason that I went out to the gig was that I'd posted something asking my then-circle of friends if anyone was going to a pub of a Friday evening, and received no response. So I went out anyway, and met a new friend, and was still so convinced that the weekend was a washout that I threw a very undignified strop at my friends on the Monday.

I've learned that most people act as if they have no idea that the world existed before they were born, or will continue after they die. For example, the convulsions amongst record companies about the modern state of record sales, contrasted with the fact that my grandfather who passed away this year can remember a time before there was ever a prospect of people making money from someone selling recordings of their music. But people assume that because the flow of history was in a particular shape when they arrived, they have a divine right to pin it to there by any means necessary. The clearest projection of this view into the future is the refusal of anyone to believe that we have an effect on the environment. It was like that when we found it! Just let it walk it off for a few minutes, everything'll be grand. The specific attitude of certain fundamentalist Christians not unadjacent to the White House on this is particularly galling.

I learned early on that there was love in the world. My parents taught me that, and so many other things that I didn't notice while I was shoving books in front of my face as fast as possible. It's kept me better than anything I was learning at the time.

I have learned that there are people who like my writing, who can form an attachment to it unconnected to actually knowing me. I still find this a little hard to believe, and expect them to just wander away at some point.

I've come to believe that compatible senses of humour are the largest part of a connection between people. Even one that's unidirectional -I can't think of any artists that I feel a connection but find unfunny.

I've learned that I'm tougher than I thought, and unless I'm mistaken, tougher than almost everyone else thought as well.

I've learned that I should have talked to Queenie more when we were in the same city.

Auld Dog is an intermittent column on this blog, where people offer their pearls of wisdom for the rest of us to ponder. If you would like to be an Auld Dog, send 600 - 700 words of wisdom, along with a bio and photo (or I'll write/ pick them) to auld.dog@gmail.com and I'll post it here.