The ManCupboard

Colombo was asking about Percy the other day. And when I looked round for him, I couldn’t see him. “Where is he”, I asked myself. Where indeed.

He’s in the mancupboard of course. But I seem to have mislaid it. Somewhere along the way. I’ll find it at some point. I have found everything so far. My camera in Montreal. My sunglasses twice. Somebody always finds my stuff and gives it back to me.

I pity the poor girl who finds the mancupboard. She won’t know what to make of it.

I remember the night I had the Good Friday party in my flat and Simon came over late and demanded to see it. And I was thinking, dude, you’re standing in it. But it was too big a leap of faith. People can misunderstand you. Well, they do me all the time. They think I’m being really aggressive and actually, I’m just getting my retaliation in first.

I did it at the weekend. I shouted at some poor hotel clerk because he wouldn’t sell me a packet of cigarettes. I told him he was a moron. Well, he was. But I shouldn’t have said that. I do a lot of things I am ashamed of afterwards. But it was weird, when we were all talking about it afterwards, Tracy said that I was right to call him a moron.

That stopped me in my tracks I can tell you.

What happened was, the guy wouldn’t sell me the cigarettes because he was doing his books. And I had to come back in a half an hour. This was at two in the morning, just after the nightclub had closed.

Legends Niteclub. If you’re interested.

In Kentville.

Which is like Smallville. Without Superman.

We were staying in the Wandlynn Motel. Me and Tracy and Tina and Martin. And Kevin was up visiting Tammy, so they called over on the Friday night.

Six of us sitting there with a very large bottle of vodka and Ophelia on the way.

Anyway, I eventually growled back to my room, sans cigarettes, and Tracy went and got them for me from him.

So then I went running back down to the foyer demanding that he sell me a packet. Which he did. I must have frightened the living daylights out of him. But we shook hands and parted friends.

I wonder does he like his job? Or does he just do it to feed his kids? Or does he beat his wife to make up for it? Or is he gay? Or does he have a young one shacked up somewhere that his missus doesn’t know about? Or what? What, what, what? What makes him tick? What makes everyone tick? And why the hell do I want to know so bad?

So yeah, Tracy rides point for me. We’ll be unstoppable. We’re going to drive a rig across America. I want to bring the truth about justice to some impoverished barrio south of Cancun, but I might have to talk him into that. That’s a long way away. Also, he sees angles I don’t. Between us, we have most of them covered.

We didn’t do much on Friday night. We were all tired. We just sat around in our room and had a few drinks. Chatted. They told me about Sarah’s Sister, the sex shop in New Minas. New Minas is the Blanchardstown of West Nova. We decided we’d go and get Kevin a present the next day. He was supposed to come with us, but he changed his mind.

We got up fairly early on Saturday and went for breakfast in the motel restaurant and I had maple syrup on my bacon because you can here in Canada. Then we drove down to New Minas.

Man, that shop is some busy. I couldn’t believe all the people traipsing in and out. It had its own carpark. I of course, being Irish, parked in the lot belonging to the shop down the block and made them all walk up in the rain. Just in case I got spotted. Anyway, it was just a normal store, with deep shelves covered in sex toys of one description or another.

I have led a very sheltered existence I think.

I saw my first Egyptian love swing.

I wonder do they do them in lilac?

We don’t love Kevin enough to pay eighty bucks for a proper luuurv toy, and he doesn’t need one anyway, so we bought him some class of erotic massage oil. Then we went to Walmart to get stuff for Tracey to take to Alberta.

It was my first time in a Walmart too. I usually refuse to go into them. But it was raining and I wanted to see what it was like.

I got my first lesson in Nova Scotia shopping. Buy the cheapest thing. No, not that one you’re looking at, you’re just paying for some doodaas that don’t amount to anything extra. This one. Thank goodness Tina was with me. I’d have bought the wrong thing. I was so busy freaking out about why I had to go and buy it when he was actually in the shop (looking at the electronics section). Then I realised that I was only being allowed to pick it because Tina was with me and I probably wouldn’t have been trusted to do it by myself so that was okay. When I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Buying the cheapest thing I mean. I don’t know why I don’t do it. It is one of my eternal self-obsessed think-ins that I have about myself. I hope I’m not a snob. I live in fear of being a snob. But I think it’s actually because cheap stuff used to be dreadful, but now it’s not, because the countries that make it have gotten better at it, but I just haven’t realised it yet. So I am getting my money’s worth.

Also, Irish people have been brainwashed into thinking expensive equals quality. When it just means expensive.

I’m sure there’s some really arcane leftie reason why I shouldn’t buy cheap stuff in a Walmart in New Minas but you know, I’m not going to think about it today. And the workers all looked reasonably chirpy. Not downtrodden like they are in the Tim Hortons’. Or insane like the people in the Subway outlets.

Then we got bored with shopping so we went back to the motel and crashed for a while and then went for a swim. They had a sauna. It was great. We sat in it for as long as we could bear, which wasn’t very long ever, and then jumped in the pool. We did it a few times and then we got bored again. It was a really dull day weatherwise. It rained, but there was no wind – Ophelia had run out of puff.

So we got ready to go out and went down the road to the Chinese buffet, which was all you could eat for $12.95. Which was also fantastic value. And I had a Chinese beer, the one you get in Dublin, I can’t remember the name of it. The one that tastes like Heineken.

I miss Heineken. The only beer you can get here that tastes like European lager is Schooner and it’s really expensive. Of course. That’s probably why I like it. Doh!

Then we did the girly make up thing (well, Tina and I did) and went to Legends.

It was legend.

I had to say that.

It was mostly hip hop. All the black kids stood around the dance floor drinking beer and watching us white folks try to dance. It was funny. Then they played the most awful techno I have ever heard.

And there was a slow set. Which I managed to avoid. I can’t remember how I did it; I think I just refused point blank.

A truly diverse musical occasion. Remind me to tell you about the Funky Chicken sometime.

We sat and watched a bloke with the biggest muscles and the smallest nose I have ever seen on the same person. You could tell he’d spent his whole adult life trying to make up for the size of his nose. He stood on the stairs near the bar flexing all night.

Then Tracy reached for something and knocked over a beer and in the confusion another one went. And he was sure he had accidentally hit me in the mouth. But I didn’t feel anything, so I reckon he must have brushed his hand against the window or something and thought that he’d done it.

But it’s a great conversation stopper: Honey, do you remember the time you knocked over my drink and punched me in the face in that nightclub in Kentville? Legends, wasn’t it?

The other day Mykyle told me in one of his endless paragraph sentences that although I was bright and educated and cosmopolitan in some way I was a bit trashy. I’m not quite sure where the comma is supposed to go – it’s difficult to know with him sometimes. Before ‘in some way’ or after? Nevertheless, I reckon he might be right. It’s just a mood I get into sometimes. When I’m happy.

I prefer to think of it as earthy. Earthy being the posh word for trashy.

We had to check out at eleven the next morning. That was tough. Seeing as the four of us were still playing jumping on the bed at three thirty. Man, we love jumping on stuff. I blame Tina and Martin for buying that trampoline. It's worse than a bouncing castle. I fell off the bed of course. Thank God Nabla wasn’t with me or I would have gone out and taken the hand brake off the car and rolled out onto the highway. (It’s a long story – we were very young). We went to the Irving gas station in New Minas for breakfast. It was really busy and I was ready to eat the table by the time my maple syrup with bacon under it arrived. Dozens and dozens of people having their Sunday lunch in a petrol station. These people love their petrol. They even eat out beside it.

Then we headed up to Wolfville to meet Kevin and his daughter and her boyfriend. They go to Acadia, the university in Wolfville. It’s a lovely college – it’s like UCG. They live in an apartment beside the bus station where I used to get the bus to Halifax. It was weird being back there. It was the first bit of context I have had, if you know what I mean.

The first time something wasn’t new anymore. That’s not Halifax, obviously.

We hung out for a bit and then drove over to the beach at Cape Blomidon Park. We collected stones for the board game I’m building and I put them on a rock to dry and somebody knicked them. I was well pissed. The stones on the beaches here are amazing – gorgeous moss greens and volcanic reds and sky blue and brown all mixed together in random combinations. Every stone is different. And clear white quartz. And red. Sometimes wrapped around a piece of basalt. And wonderful, mother of pearl-lined shells, glistening like a fingernail on a bloody hand in the red mud of the bay. Tina even found a piece of soapstone and gave it to me to carve the king out of it. I put it in my camera case so I still have that. I have enough to get started anyway.

Nova Scotia used to be part of Africa you know. A long time ago.

We stood around looking at the sea. They’re great to go to a beach with – they all know lots of things about the plants and the shellfish and the tides. I’d never go hungry with this lot. Even in Alberta. They’re going to kill me a bear so I can eat it. We’re going to get a cherry picker and put it on the back of the truck so when we kill a bear or an elk or a caribou, or just find some roadkill, we can grab it with the cherry picker and throw it up back and head off, quick as you like.

Martin told me a story about him and his mother being chased by a black bear when he was young. And his uncle went out the next day and shot it and then they ate it. He was trying to explain what it tasted like but I couldn’t get past the ‘oh, it just stood up on its hind legs and roared at us and then it started to run at us and we ran and my mother fell and I went back and helped her up’ bit of the story. I think he said it had a sweet taste. When I visit Alberta I am not leaving the house on my own I don’t think. I don’t care if they hibernate. They don’t exactly put an ad in the paper advertising the day they wake up, now do they? And knowing my luck with big hairy things, I’d pick that weekend to visit.

Myles, I’m going to take you to task about that comment one of the days. When I think of a witty enough riposte. :-)

Then we went back to Wolfville and went to Joes for supper and I had English fish and chips. Which wasn’t as exotic as bear steak, but which hit the spot. And then it was time to go back to the city. I didn’t get lost this time, thank goodness. More context I suppose.

It rained all the way back. Inside the car and out.

Coach Spankie rooting for Christopher

Teen recovering from grizzly attack, surgery in Vancouver hospital
The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER (CP) -

A 13-year-old boy mauled by a grizzly bear Monday is out of intensive care and recovering from his wounds in a Vancouver hospital.

"He's talking and he's making the odd joke," Christopher Solecki's aunt Catherine Fairlie said on Wednesday. "He said he'd like to have a bearskin rug, but only one particular bear."

Christopher and his brother were out for an evening stroll with their dog on the family's cattle farm near Burns Lake when the dog disturbed the bear and it charged. Christopher was bitten in the leg, breaking his femur, while his horrified older brother Matthew, 15, looked on. The bear grabbed Christopher and threw him, then either bit, clawed or stood on the boy's head, fracturing his skull.

"He wasn't sure where the bear was, so he was trying to crawl away, but he couldn't because of his broken leg," Fairlie said. Matthew ran to alert his father, Jon, who raced to Christopher's side and carried him to safety.
Fairlie said her nephew isn't quite sure what happened after the initial chomp, but his memory and mental faculties seem to be functioning normally.

"There aren't any concerns of brain injury," she said.

Christopher was helicoptered to hospital in Burns Lake, where he was stabilized, then flown to a hospital in Vancouver for surgery. He was groggy from painkillers on Wednesday, but otherwise recovering well with his mother Cynthia at his side, Fairlie said.

"He's in great spirits. He's a strong kid and an athlete. He just has to get past this physical impasse."

Ironically, Christopher is a star goalie for the Burns Lake Bruins. His minor hockey teammates, which boasts a bear paw logo, are pulling for him, said coach Grant Spankie. The coach is flying to Vancouver this weekend to visit. Christopher played all 40 games with the team last season and was the team's only goalie.
Team manager Brenda Payne said his loss will leave a void.

Meanwhile, the search for the grizzly continues. Conservation officers deployed traps snares and bait stations, but there was no sign of the bear on Wednesday. Conservation officer Bob Coyle said the bear likely won't be destroyed if it's captured. The grizzly apparently acted defensively, spooked by the dog, then alarmed to see the two boys so close.

"This encounter was totally outside of its experiences," Coyle said. "It seems to be reacting within the norms of bear behaviour." He said the bear is likely "long gone." Those who try to stand and fight a grizzly generally don't fare as well as Christopher did, said Coyle.

"This young fellow was fortunate," he added.

More gifts for a girl travelling light

Interesting fact no. 1: If someone sends a dozen red roses to you at your workplace, your co-workers spend all day trying to figure out why.

Interesting fact no. 2: If someone sends a dozen red roses to you at your workplace, you spend all day looking at them. And do NO WORK.

I can't post the roses, so here's another gift I got recently. Appropriately, it's called Gift.

GIFT
Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Thank you.

No point in just obsessing is there...

Jersey Girl sent me this website to ease my bear phobia.

Not working! Website under the title.


Staying Safe in Bear Country.
Recommendations from the International Bear Association (IBA)

Bear-Human Interactions
Most bears have previous experience around people and learn from each interaction.
Humans usually don't even know they came close to a bear, BEARS USUALLY AVOID PEOPLE.

Two major categories of Bear-Human interactions where bears don't avoid or even approach people: Defensive and Non-defensive

Defensive Interactions
Bear thinks you are a threat to itself, its cubs or its food cache
Usually you approached it, and entered into its personal space, surprising or crowding it
Most likely will appear agitated and stressed
Closer you are too it before it becomes aware of you, more likely it is to react defensively
Almost always stop short of contact, fight/flight is triggered
Defensive response that results in an attack (physical contact) almost always involve grizzly bears surprised at close range, on a carcass or protecting young. The few defensive attacks by black bears have been females protecting cubs (but these are very rare).

Non-defensive Interactions
A number of different non-defensive motivations that may appear similar to each other:
Curious bear
Human-habituated bear
Food-conditioned bear
Dominance-testing bear
Predatory bear

Avoiding a close encounter
LET BEAR KNOW YOU'RE HUMAN by talking or singing.

The Teddy Bear's Picnic wasn't such a bad idea, was it.

AVOID BEARS THAT ARE AWARE OF YOU AND UNCONCERNED
NEVER APPROACH A BEAR
LEAVE AREA YOU ENCOUNTERED A BEAR
IF YOU HEAR VOCALIZATIONS OR SEE UNATTENDED CUBS…be extremely cautious and leave the area silently the way you came.

Response during bear encounters:
Identify yourself as human to bears you cannot avoid by talking and slowly waving your arms. Try to give the bear your scent.
Increase your distance from the bear, even if it appears unconcerned.
Do not run, it could invite pursuit.

If a bear approaches you:

Stand your ground!
Quickly assess the situation. Is the bear behaving defensively or in some other way?
Remain calm, attacks are rare.
Do not run unless you're absolutely sure of reaching safety.
Group together. Prepare your deterrent.

If the bear is approaching in a defensive manner:

Stand your ground. Try to appear non-threatening.
Don't shout at the bear. Talk to the bear in a calm voice.
If the bear stops its approach, increase your distance.
If the bear resumes its approach, stand your ground, keep talking calmly, and prepare to use your deterrent.
If the bear cannot be deterred and is intent on attack, fall to the ground as close to contact as possible and play dead.
When the attack stops, remain still and wait for the bear to leave. If an attack is prolonged or the bear starts eating you, it is no longer being defensive.

No kidding!!

If the bear approaches in a non-defensive manner:
Talk to the bear in a firm voice.
Try to move away from the bear's travel path, that may be all it wants you to do.

If the bear follows you with its attention directed at you. Stop! Stand your ground and prepare to use your deterrent.

Act aggressively toward the bear. Let the bear know you will fight if attacked. Shout! Make yourself look as big as possible. Stamp your feet as you take a step or two toward the bear. Threaten the bear with whatever is at hand. A bear that is initially curious or testing you may become predatory if you do not stand up to it. The more the bear persists, the more aggressive your response should be.

If the bear attacks, use your deterrent and fight for your life. Kick, punch or hit the bear with whatever weapon is available. Concentrate your attack on the face, eyes and nose. Fight any bear that attacks you in your building or tent.

See, see, you do punch them on the nose!!

Remember:

If an attack (physical contact is made) is defensive… Play dead. (Don't play dead before you have used all possible means, such as deterrents to prevent an attack)
If the attack is predatory… Fight back.


HELPING SOMEONE BEING ATTACKED
You may be able to drive away an attacking bear from someone else but if you do this you risk drawing the attack to yourself.

Okay, so I'm obsessed

Family doctor mauled by black bear in Ontario woods

Police and wildlife officials were on the hunt for a wounded black bear after a woman was mauled to death and her husband injured as he was forced to use a Swiss Army knife to keep the animal from dragging her into northern Ontario bush.

Campers have been ordered out of the back country of Missinaibi Lake Provincial Park, about 80 kilometres north of Chapleau, Ont., as conservation officers equipped with a helicopter and a dog team scour the area.
Natural Resources officials said Marc Jordan of Cambridge, Ont., was armed with only a Swiss Army knife as he fought desperately to keep the predatory animal from dragging his fatally mauled wife, Dr. Jacqueline Perry, into the brush.

"He fought back as hard as he could with the weapon he had at hand," Jolanta Kowalski of the Ministry of Natural Resources said Wednesday. "But the bear was relentless in wanting to take her into the bush."
Jordan, 30, suffered lacerations while slashing the bear at least five times with the knife, police said. The computer specialist was flown to a hospital in Sudbury, Ont., where he was expected to require surgery. He was listed in serious but stable condition.

Perry, 30, was a family physician at a Cambridge hospital. Staff at the Grandview Medical Centre were devastated after hearing of Tuesday's attack, said the centre's lead physician, Dr. Jeff Main.

"Jacqueline represented vitality and youthfulness," Main said. "It's like losing a child. She was the youngest partner here."

Jordan's mother, Rosalind Jordan, said he suffered multiple lacerations, puncture wounds and severed nerves.

"They loved hiking, they loved the outdoors. They were also dedicated to the well-being of their community," she said.

Jordan and Perry were on a two-week holiday, camping and kayaking alone at a remote campsite when a black bear hunting for food attacked, said provincial police Const. Karen Farand.

In the frantic attempt to save his wife, the injured Jordan carried her to their kayak and began to paddle to the nearest campsite, Farand said.

He yelled for help and Vytas Abrutis, 54, and his 30-year-old son Rytis from Philadelphia, were camping nearby and went to help.

"When I ... saw his dead wife, I just couldn't believe it," said Rytis Abrutis.

Abrutis was so shaken he and his father have decided to leave the campground early.

"I can't deal with this," he said. "I hate bears. I've always hated them. They should all be shot. When it comes to human safety, there's no use for bears and sharks or animals like that."

Jordan put his wife into their boat, which carried them all off in search of help.

About a kilometre away, they spotted and flagged down another boat, which carried a doctor from North Carolina and an off-duty police officer.

The doctor tried to treat Perry while the boat continued on to the park's main office, about 10 kilometres away.

But by then Perry had succumbed to her injuries "and was obviously dead," said Farand.

"I've lived here all my life and this is a first for me," said Farand. "I can't even imagine what (Perry and Jordan) went through."

Farand said the area is home to many black bears and has more than its usual share of bear sightings this year because it hasn't been a good season for blueberries.

Keith Scott, a bear expert with the Ministry of Natural Resources, said such attacks are "very rare."

"There's only been four fatalities in Ontario through black bears dating back to about 1978," he said.

"This one in this particular case, it's early in the investigation, but it appears to be a predatory-type bear. These bears have learned to and often prey on humans."

The attack is just the latest in what has been a busy season for bear attacks across Canada.

Perry's death is the 10th fatal bear attack in Ontario in the last 100 years.

The most recent incident occurred in 1992, when a male geologist was killed by a bear in the Cochrane area.
Perry's death was the talk of the town Wednesday in Chapleau, where many residents go to Missinaibi to fish and view historic aboriginal rock paintings.

Coun. Bud Swanson said the attack comes at a time when locals are still seeing nuisance bears coming into town in search of food.

Conservation groups have renewed their call for a return of the spring black bear hunt following the attack.
Officials with the Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen's Alliance and the Canadian Outdoor Heritage Alliance argue that the spring hunt would help manage the province's burgeoning number of black bears.

NOSA president John Kaplanis said that less hunting pressure means bears are learning that they no longer need to fear people.

"These unhunted predators move to the top of the food chain, become more aggressive in search of food and are less fearful of man," Kaplanis said.

COHA chairman Bob McQuay agreed with Kaplanis, stating that "bears no longer fear humans and consider us just part of their wilderness buffet."

Kowalski was reluctant to talk about the ministry's bear management policy on Wednesday.

"(With one woman dead and a man in hospital) today is not the day to talk about this," she said.

© 2005 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Sitting home, Wednesday night

Sitting home Wednesday night. Today was ridiculously hyper. There was an air of it in Halifax; I suppose it’s the students being back that’s doing it.

Sitting out on the deck. We have the smallest deck in the world. If I sit with my chair rammed up against the kitchen wall, I can prop my feet up on the railing at the far side, put the laptop between my stomach and my thighs and type with my elbows on the arm of the chair. The only problem is when I’m having a cigarette (sorry, mum); I have to lean forward to tip the ash.

Why have they not invented the ash-less cigarette? It is a total pain in the arse tipping one’s ash when one has one’s laptop balanced delicately as a creamy tankard of frothy Arthur’s between one’s stomach and one’s thighs.

That was a Baz sentence, by the way. Baz is my brother. I must tell you all about him some day. I talk about him quite a lot. I sometimes wonder does he ever talk about me. I can’t ask him, because to do so would be to invite a carefully crafted, superbly supercilious email about how far beneath his contempt I exist; too far to deserve the effort of a response. Which hits every one of my many buttons simultaneously.

There’s nothing worse than a bitter Piscean.

An insecure Cancerian possibly….

Anyway, I’m burning cds for the weekend. I’m going down to Long Island. Again. It is my new drug of choice, for so many reasons, none of which I am going to go into in any detail here. Those of you who care know. And the rest of youse can all fuck off, because I met someone I knew in the street today.

And she said hello to me first.

SCORE QUEENIE!!!!!

The insecure Cancerian in the Royal family. The one who spoils Christmas. The one who never knows when to shut up. The one that has to be the centre of attention all the time.

Why do I believe all this SHIT about myself. I’m febblus me. People I don’t know notice what I’m wearing and then when they meet me they say ‘were you walking down Barrington yesterday wearing a pink skirt’. And I pretend I can’t remember. Even though, inside, I’m on my knees weeping with gratitude at whatever divine being sorted this little victory out for me.

I love this city. It’s just the right size pond for me.

I guarantee you I will know everyone in this city in one year’s time. Then I’ll want to leave.

But I won’t really, because I’ll want to do another summer here. Tish was talking to the Gorgeous Gabe the other day while donating her beautiful hair to child cancer victims, as only Tish can do, and he told her that fall here is a long redolent slide into the hoary forgetfulness of winter. Well, he didn’t use those exact words, but that’s what he meant. I’m really looking forward to it.

There are five of us in the house. The last one arrived today. A deep, silent Cape Bretoner. Which means he’ll be mad on some level, but it might take a while to figure it out. But he’ll be mad, oh yes. He didn’t know what to make of me. This long stringy thing in painted on jeans and a low cut top babbling at him about how he should come upstairs more because the basement is very dark, isn’t it. And you need to get a bit of light all the time.

He came up, give him his due, and we sat on the tiniest deck in the world for a while and he opened up a little bit and told me he gave up engineering to go back and do nuclear medicine. Which I had to look up on the internet afterwards.

The deck is my perch. That’s what Bruce says. Bruce is the guy I’ve been sharing with since I moved in. We have a very strange relationship. He resents me on some level. I think it’s because I’m smart and I’ve got a good job and he’s smart and he’s got a shit job. And he can’t figure out exactly why I’ve one up on him but he suspects it’s probably got something to do with my having a nice ass.

Prick.

It’s unnerving sometimes. I get nervous when he’s around. But then I relax and he does too and we have great chats. And he does loads of stuff for me. He puts out the bins and he hasn’t asked me to do it yet. And he went to get us cigarettes the other night. After he had smoked all of mine. And he lets me into the bathroom first in the morning. But there’s always something bubbling under the surface. He reminds me of a lot of guys I knew in college. We’d have these strange afternoons, or evenings, or nights when they’d insist on walking me home and I’d insist they slept on the floor and they would keep me up all night talking as a punishment for not sleeping with them. I’d sit there and curse whatever divine being it was organised for me to be a woman.

I deserve my little victories. I do.

Marissa and Justin are the other two. They’re very young. Students. Marissa’s very bouncy and Justin’s a big stoner. Apparently he’s a good soccer player as well. I’ll have to give him the lecture about his lungs.

We’re all rammed into the little yellow house on PrettyArmyInstallation (PAI) Ave and everyone’s wondering who the troublemaker’s going to be.

Who’s going to spoil Christmas?

Why is Google so slow today? It’s not the internet connection. Everything else is humming along as usual. I started imagining that the internet collapsed today. I am extremely unprepared. I should find a website that tells me how to prepare for an internetless world, as I can’t remember what they’re like. I am such a goldfish. We all are I suppose.

Poor New Orleans. It puts everything into perspective doesn’t it. I find that when I’m done with the goldfish moment on that, it puts my own life into some sort of perspective. I used to feel really selfish about thinking like that, but now I realise that almost everyone does. And the people who don’t are really special and should be helped in whatever way to keep doing it. And not given to bureaucrats to manage, because if that happens they’ll just wither and die of pain from the neglect and indecision and penny-pinching that comes with that territory.

The rest of us are more selfish. The thought I had today was that I gotta keep travelling. Everywhere I go gets destroyed afterwards and a lot of places I haven’t been. That’s really selfish. But it just popped into my head. So I thought I’d write it down, to show you all how selfish I am.

Because it’s my blog.

This level of honesty is starting to freak me out a little bit. I’m starting to think of whom I’ll be upsetting. The weird thing about a blog is that once even one person starts reading it, you adapt it to ensure they won’t be offended. Well that’s what I do. Sometimes I end up writing stuff and looking back at it knowing I changed it in my brain before I wrote it down.

Which wasn’t the original plan.

I’ll never have the nerve to write a novel. Which is probably just as well for the rest of you.

Jesus! I’ve gotten another spam comment on Percy’s. GOOGLE! What the fuck is going on? I’ll have to switch my comment function off. Which is fine, because no one comments anyway.

Truly, there is no escape from the entrepreneur. I think they should be all taken out and shot myself. They do more damage to the world. Give the venture capital to the caring in the world and lets all sit back for a moment and watch them fall over in excitement and then tear themselves to shreds spending it. We had to watch the internet pioneers do it. It couldn’t be any worse this way.

Canadian Navy sets out to New Orleans from Halifax

I can see Halifax harbour from my office. Today I watched the Canadian Navy flotilla set out on its four day trip down to New Orleans. They removed all the weapons from the boats and filled the gaps with blankets and diapers, because 'they are what's needed'.

Indeed.

One of my colleagues has a brother on board one of the ships and says it is so rammed with supplies, he is sharing his bunk with boxes of diapers. The flotilla must sail through the two hurricanes currently making their way up towards the Grand Banks, then will go past the US Navy flotilla coming out of Virginia and will get to NO before them.

All the tankers, sailboats and yachts in the harbour stood to and let them pass. The fireboats accompanied them and sprayed them as they went. Each of the four ships sounded their foghorns, even though it is another bright bright blue day of blazing sunshine. It is a little windy because of the approaching hurricanes, so you could see the flags snapping in the wind and all the sailors on board standing to attention (while getting soaked presumably).

Everyone here is very proud of their quick turnaround, and a little nervous for them. I hope they stay safe and can deal with the unimaginable sights that await them. Not to mention the bacteria and disease and grief.

And I hope that Aaron Broussard and the Emergency Management guy and Sherriff Harry Lee can find some comfort from their arrival:

Tim Russert on Meet the Press talked with Aaron Broussard, president of hard-hit Jefferson Parish, immediately after Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff defended the federal response to the tragedy. An angry Broussard called for the firing of top officials responsible for the poor response, saying "the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."

But his appearance ended with the man in tears and even Russert barely able to keep it together, when Broussard said: "The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' and he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.' Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. [Broussard begins sobbing.] Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday...and she drowned Friday night!"She drowned Friday night!

[Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us! Nobody’s coming to get us."

Broussard also recounted: "We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago.

FEMA--we had 1,000gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, 'Come get the fuel right away.' When we got there with our trucks, they got a word: 'FEMA says don't give you the fuel.'"

Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, 'No one is getting near these lines.'"

Cute Baby Pandas, My Ass!

Oh, you all mock me, but I know a thing or two, I do!!

Bear attacks

Calgary man fights grizzly, rescues badly injured pal

Calgary - The terrifying image of a grizzly bounding toward him will forever be burned into the mind of a Calgary man who not only survived the encounter, but who also saved the life of his friend.
Michael Waldhuber, 29, had been separated from his hiking partner on the Bryant Creek Trail by about 15 metres, last Wednesday, when he heard his friend yell, "Whoa, bear!" Seconds later, a blood-curdling scream pierced the silence in the dense Banff National Park forest. Waldhuber ran towards his pal, but stopped cold when he noticed rustling in the bush.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, it's coming,'" Waldhuber said in an interview about their encounter with the grizzly about 25 kilometres south of the Banff townsite. The massive grizzly sow, with her cub nearby, lunged from the bush and charged toward Waldhuber. "I had my bear spray in my hand and I sprayed her in the face but she turned, circled me and tried to charge from another angle," he said. "I sprayed her again and she circled me a third time." As he aimed his bear spray at her a final time, the sow paused and fled.

But the real horror was yet to begin for Waldhuber. As he edged closer to his buddy who was screaming in pain, yelling, "I'm dying," over and over again, Waldhuber was terrified of what he would find. The man's face was covered in blood, and there was a massive gash in his head, revealing part of his scalp, and his tricep muscle had been ripped completely out of his arm, said Waldhuber. "I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt so I took it off and wrapped it around his arm," he said. "I pulled out the first-aid kit and wrapped a bandage around his head. "He was in shock and kept saying he was dying, but I said, 'No man, you're not dying, I'll get you out of here.'"

The victim was losing blood and the bear had ripped open his water pack, leaving the two men to share Waldhuber's limited supply. They were in such a remote area, it was an hour-and-a-half hike to the nearest lodge, and Waldhuber was out of bear spray. "When it was charging me I couldn't even think, but in the aftermath, I was scared," said Waldhuber. They reached the lodge and saw someone outside. Waldhuber then screamed for help and within 30 minutes, his friend was airlifted to hospital. He will likely remain in Calgary's Peter Lougheed hospital for up to two months.

The two men, both avid, experienced hikers, had been on a eight-day hike when they stumbled upon the sow and her cub. All other hikers were airlifted from the area Thursday morning and the trail was closed for the weekend to give the sow space.

There has been a rash of bear attacks this spring and summer. A Manitoba man fended off a black bear on Saturday, and the week before a black bear killed another Manitoba man. There have been four grizzly attacks in Alberta since June, including the one on Waldhuber's friend. In another of the recent attacks, Canmore resident Isabelle Dube was mauled to death while she jogged with a couple of friends.

Aragorn's very annoyed with Sauron

From his book publishing site:

In the often and rightly quoted words of Bill Clinton, "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." We see now how individuals and groups around the country are acting in any way they can to help their fellow citizens in Louisiana, Mississippi and other devastated places near the Gulf of Mexico. They refuse to stand idly by and wait for President Bush and his morally-bankrupt, pirate administration to respond in an appropriately urgent and compassionate manner to the escalating agony and desperation of our fellow citizens. This agony and desperation was caused in large part by a near complete absence of adequate federal government funding, preparedness, and leadership.

We the people will continue to help Americans and non-Americans alike, with or without the participation or approval of George W. Bush and his Neo-Conservative cohorts. While it is true that what is most important right now is to rescue, feed, house, and in any way possible care for those immediately affected by the disaster, it is equally true that in the long run those directly responsible for aggravating the tragic situation must be held accountable. The mounting evidence of the Bush administration's criminal mismanagement of the nation, as well as its consistently arrogant disregard for our planet's people and natural environments must be confronted immediately. Those who voted for Bush last year, or who have continually supported his outlaw administration in its destructively dishonest conduct, including not only extremist conservatives but also politically-calculating democrats, need not hang their heads or avert their eyes now. What they can and ought to do is join the increasing numbers of Americans who are demanding that presidential impeachment proceedings be initiated as soon as possible.

Members of the Bush Administration responsible for the blatant lies and self-serving manipulations that have fanned the flames of disaster from Iraq to New Orleans must be prosecuted as our laws require. We must insist on this. Furthermore, we must not allow these disgracefully unpatriotic public servants to be pardoned by any future president as Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon. Please call or write your government representatives and help get the scoundrels out of government and in prison where they belong. Do not allow the subject to be changed, do not be distracted. The time to act is now. Take back your country.


- Viggo Mortensen, 1 Sept., 2005.

Attaboy, Viggo - you tell 'em!!

Oh Happy Day!

Trish and Keith got married yesterday in the Public Gardens in Halifax. It was a beautiful ceremony and I cried my eyes out as per flippin' usual.

Fantastic wedding.

Very tired and it's a beautiful day so I'm going to try and get the seven gallons of product out of my hair and go outside to the sunshine.

Wedding photos under the title.

From the waters to the wild: a winkle's journey

Queenie is feeling kinda dreamy these days. She doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because of the weather. Even though the summer is drawing to a close, the sun still drags itself up through the mist every morning, burns it off and then draws us all to her warmth. I walk to work each morning with my iPod playing a mix I made lately. I just went through all the songs and picked the two hundred ones that mean the most to me. So the walk is like taking a warm memory bath every day. By the time I get to the office, I don’t want to go in just yet, so I get a coffee from Just Us! and sit in the little garden outside the building and look at the silver sparkles on the water in the harbour. Sometimes there are so many they make my eyes ache. So I look up at the blue blue sky instead.

Where to start, where to start….

And I think about the weekend past, or the weekend coming. And a great big sigh of happiness just comes bubbling up and warms my insides just like my skin.

It’s not that I haven’t had great summers; Queenie could find a party in a Taliban-run fortress with no doors and no windows for chrissakes. But this is the first where I haven’t had to depend on anyone else to go away for the weekend. I just go. And with nice weather and a more relaxed attitude to camping, I can spend two or three days in a beautiful peaceful spot without having to know someone well off enough to own a house there. Or organise a group of people to book somewhere. Or pay through the nose for a single supplement.

The Floating Fire

I have to tell you about the floating fire. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I didn’t bother to bring my camera down to Oilean Fada two weekends ago. It being a full moon and us going to build a fire in Bear Cove. Silly girl. Never mind. It is burned on my memory forever.

By the time I got down to Digby, the guys had decided we were going to camp in the cove. So it was too late to go back to Halifax and get my camping gear. Never mind – they gave me everything I needed. One of the things I love about here is the fact that a trip anywhere involves at least two pickup trucks rammed with stuff: tents, chairs, coolers, barbeques, towels, sleeping mats, bags, comforters, food, boxes of condiments and sauces. I sat on the deck and let them pack the truck. When we got down to the cove, we had to unpack everything and carry it down. Except we didn’t, as two of them had brought their ATVs to move everything down.

I love this country! They’re so organised.

I suppose I should disapprove of ATVs, but actually I just want one. Who needs a car when you can fit two people and a beer cooler and a tent on one of them? And go anywhere. And then, when you get back, just drive it up onto the bed of the pick up and off you go.

Well, I suppose you need a pickup, now that I read that sentence again.

Anyway, the women made the fatal mistake of letting the guys and Queenie organise the camp, which meant that very little got done in the way of organising before they arrived. I am getting away with murder in the division of labour stakes at the moment. None of the blokes will let me do any of the heavy lifting stuff. And none of the women expect me to know how to turn the barbeque on. So I get to sit on a rock or take photos or generally just ponce around.

They’ll be onto me soon, I’d say. We’ll deal with that when it happens.

The winklepickers and the monologue

Anyways, M and T went winkle-picking and I sat on a rock and listened to an extensive monologue from R about some girl he wanted to go out with even though she had a kid with someone else, but that didn’t matter and he was just waiting on a phone call from her and he was going to go over to Bridgewater and pick her up because the guy she was with now was a real jerk and he treated her real bad even though she had a kid for him and she was real nice not like his current girlfriend who was a real bitch and the other girl (Lisa I think it was) was real sorry because she had introduced the two of them and she had rung him to apologise and he was real pleased because he really preferred her and had wanted to go out with her all along.

Nice save, Lisa, I thought.

The lads told me afterwards R had signed over his life insurance policy to the other girl BEFORE he even started going out with her.

Real nice save, Lisa.

I wonder did my ex ever unsign his? Probably. But if not, that would be a nice surprise to find out, wouldn’t it?

And then I’d get to hear about the money too.

Joke.

I think.

Anyways, M and T eventually arrived back with a big pot of winkles and set about deciding where to build the cooking area. This always takes a long time. They can never decide. And I’m no use, I can’t even figure out the wind direction. Eventually they agreed on a spot, which was conveniently situated right beside me. Actually, that’s usually what happens. The more I think of it, the more I realise I’m a natural. I just zone in on the most comfortable spot in any given situation and you should just build the kitchen wherever I am sitting. T set about building a kitchen. Man, that dude just loves heavin’ rocks around. While he rearranged the beach in order to cook a few hotdogs, M and I had a beer and watched the sunset.

The mossies were ferocious. Huge ones, tearing lumps out of us. They all ended up using my DEET spray even though they don’t normally. It was insane. You’d go for a pee and by the time you’d wiped your ass you’d have four bites in it. Because really, I don’t care what anyone says, you can’t spray DEET there. You could combust under certain circumstances.

Really big, lumpy, sore bites too. Not great for work the following week. Surreptitious scratching has to be just that, doncha know.

Grrrrl Power

M’s wife Tina arrived on her ATV then. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl power with a big gguuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The muffler’s gone on it, you can hear it coming a mile away, which meant a bit of a spring into action on our part and we had nearly everything organised by the time she arrived. Well, T did. M and I managed to clamber down off the rock and lookabusy.

It’s really interesting, when we go on these trips, the guys do the cooking. They set up the camp as well. But there’s an interesting hiatus in the middle where nothing gets done unless Tina or Amanda or Melissa give everything the once over and point out the mistakes and then take off again. Then the cooking starts.

I don’t know if they’re even aware of it.

Anyway, eventually everyone arrived and we had a bit of nosebag and started building the fire. It has been a very dry month, so we had to be very careful. And the tide comes right up to the grass in Bear Cove. So we had to build it on the beach, which meant it would flood come high tide, due about half past midnight.

So they built it in the lee of an enormous rock. In a little bowl created by the dip in another flat rock. Reckoned she might hold a piece.

And so she did. We drank beer and ate winkles. The wind rose a little as night fell and the tide crept up the beach, silent under the babble of our voices.

I’m not a winkle girl. I wasn’t feeling the best anyway, what with Lady Moonbeam coming to visit (when is she ever going to feck off). Better out than in I say. The fire was so hot I was burning up anyway. So I climbed up the grassy bank and released the winkles back into the wild, and sat on another rock and looked down on the beach. I could see the sea flicking itself around the fire. It slid in among the rocks and filled up the cracks and created a pool. The fire, supported by the lip of the rock upon which it was built, burned steadily in one corner. Not even the maddest Finns in the maddest part of that mad country could’ve built a steam bath like that one. It wasn’t long before they noticed. And they’re in. Well a couple of them, clothes and all.

Better out than in I say, I stayed where I was.

After a while someone came up to check on me and I told them I had chucked up my winkles.

“Oh? Where?”

Well, dearie, seeing as that was your first question, I won’t bother telling you I think it was around about where you’re standing. And I'm fine, thanks for asking.

We woke up at eight the next morning to gentle rain tapping on our tents, and made filter coffee with two saucepans and a roll of toilet paper. We drank it in the wet grass and looked at the work to be done taking the camp down, then walked back to the trucks and went home. It was all still there, untouched, on Wednesday when they went back to get it.

Sure, why wouldn't it be.

Long Tusket Lake, New France near Weymouth

Photos of the weekend's camping under the title as usual.

On the Stump

On the stump on the Eastern Shore - media interviews outside the Lake View Diner

Ended up spending the day travelling up the Eastern Shore meeting people with DD and a strong candidate we have up there. Communications with Halifax became problematic the further up we got, but it's a beautiful area, totally unspoilt and great winding roads like the west of Ireland.

Holidays are comin', holidays are comin', whoohoo

Full moon, Oilean Fada.

Before I start, sincere apologies for not posting sooner. Blame Ray Cunningham and his stoopid computer game. And before that, blame some woman I met on the interweb and her even more stoopid computer game (at least Queenie can do some of the levels on Ray's game).

But I needed a few days of mindless, repetitive action, what with the complete overload of intellectual stimulation I have had in the last two weeks. So let's try to put childish games aside and fill you in on all that's been happening.



First of all WORK. Finally.

Yes, work, that thing I hated so much at home. As Columbo said in an email tonight, why would I want to be faffin' around on holidays for months on end, or something along those lines. As Colombo would say, 'quite'. Although I was very nervous heading into this as you all know. But I needn't have been. The initial reaction is lovely jubbley, as my brother used to say.

It's quite an unusual routine for me really. I go into work at least thirty minutes early every day, because I want to. I do stuff. They're all really happy with it. They tell me I'm great, which those of you who know me know is tiger balm to this girl. I do some more stuff. I go home at five on the dot. I don't think about it. 'Cept I do a bit, but in a nice way.

They've been so so so nice. I've been welcomed and chatted to like I'm an equal by everyone. All the representatives are great: really smart, really energetic, no bullshit, great sense of humour and fun. My crew, the ones I research for, are top notch, a pleasure to work for. The rest of them seem to be really on top of their game. The media is giving them a big love fest at the moment, particularly the head guy. Who has even taken time out a couple of times to come into my office and check I'm okay.

The rest of the staff all seem to be delighted I've come to work here. No jealousies, no standing against a thick wall to avoid knives in my back, no scenes, no tantrums (not even from me :-)!) The woman I replaced spent two weeks training me in so beautifully I was gagging for her to leave and let me at it. My only regret is she's leaving, because we agreed that we would have really liked to work together.

Today I did my first piece of proper work. I found an issue, researched it a little bit, wrote it up, sent it up the line. Got the go ahead, wrote a letter to the Minister. Sent it to the representative. He edited it. He was very amused that I had used the word tranche. The only other person he knew who had used it in his presence was Enda Kenny. Whom he worked with in Bosnia a few years ago. I pp-ed it and faxed it through. He rang me a few minutes later. After a few minutes of idle chit chat (Nova Scotians are great for the idle chit chat, never in a hurry, which is good), he said:

"I'm just checking, when I said sign it for me, you wrote your own name, didn't you, you didnt forge mine?"

"Yeah, yeah, I pp-ed it", I said.

Silence.

"You know, where you write pp and then your name and it means something in Latin about sending it for you?"

"Ohhhhhh, I thought you'd pee-peed on it."

Oh, the joys of being separated by nothing but a common language.

Sent it to the press goddesses, minus the word tranche and a few other bits he'd taken out (with repeated assurances that my work was great, just a bit long) and they did a little something with it. We'll see what happens. Being a little detached helps, I don't have the same need to have my ideas taken on board. However long that will last.

I suppose my main conclusion is that there's obviously a way to work with someone and take some of their ideas and not take others and still send them out the door at five o'clock with a spring in their step. Rather than a murderous heart. And I'm encountering it here and I am thriving under it.

Second of all, WEEKENDS, of which there have been two since I blogged last

I've had two great weekends, travelling out of Halifax to meet friends. Two weekends ago I went North East to River John, to meet Ian and Margaret, who are from Kingston. They have a trailer up there and we had a really nice weekend which I will write up soon. Promise.

Last weekend I went back down to an tOilean Fada and had a great weekend that included a full moon party in the by now infamous Bear Cove. Which I will definitely write up, O.F. being my favourite place in NS and in my top five internationally as well. And the most amazing fire I've ever seen. A fire that floated on water!

This weekend I am going camping with na hOileanaigh Fhaide who are descending en masse to a lakeside somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the French Shore - south west - near Weymouth. Weymouth Nova Scotia that is. There will be ten of them and seven kids and me.

I heard that. Ha ha.

They have assured me that yes, we can camp in a straight line. This is very important. It is advised on the 'how to deal with bears in Nova Scotia' website that I found (yes, there is one, well, it's part of the Dept of Natural Resources site) and bookmarked this week. Apparently, it is better to do this, as if you camp in a circle, the bear gets confused and may attack the Irish girl in the tent over on the left while looking for an exit from the circle.

And we wouldn't want that, then, would we. BTW, the OFers said that there well might have been a bear stalking me. So there! Oh ye of little faith in me.

Nyah!

These weekends are a life saver.

I don't have to deal with Halifax on the weekend.
I don't have to deal with Bruce the strange housemate.
Who is very nice, but a bit strange.
I don't have time to get homesick.
I have something to look forward to all week.
I can pretend I'm still travelling to a certain extent.

And they're rippin' good craic too.

Although Labor Day weekend is soon and then the fun quotient is down and life shifts into a higher gear (in Canada summer is for enjoying yourself and every other season is for working, I am told) I am constantly gobsmacked at how concerned random people have been that I am enjoying myself and not bored or homesick.

They're so good to me. They take me in, feed me, water me, put me up, wash my clothes, eat my cooking, take me out, drive me around, listen to me witter on about Ireland for hours, let me play with their animals, their kids, their kid's trampolines (at three thirty in the morning) their houses, their computers, their stereos, their boats, their basements and their camping gear. They let me take over their kitchens, boss them around a bit, compulsively tidy their sittingrooms.

And then after all that, when I'm gone back to Halifax, they email me to see I'm okay, ring me for the same reason, invite me down again anytime. I have Christmas invitations coming out of my ears, despite my protestations that I'm sorted for the holiday. "Thanksgiving, then, you'll have to come for Thanksgiving."

As I was being driven (seventy miles!!) to the bus (after a lengthy argument about why there was no way he was going to drive me all the way to Halifax - two hundred miles) last Sunday I said it to my host, about how comfortable I feel here, how easily it has been to slip into loads of different layers of Nova Scotian society. In typical NS polite fashion, the other person said that it might be something to do with me, that I fit in well, but I don't think so. I think it's them.

Third of all, PARTIES, of which there have been two in the last fortnight in Halifax

Yes, parties. One dinner party, which was very strange, it being of the work crowd on my second day in work, me being a bit tense therefore. And Joanna's going away do which was last night, which was great. Where I met an Irish guy, from Kerry, who has just moved here as well, for the same reasons as me. Twas hilarious, the conversation that ensued when we realised that.

Let's just say Bertie's ears were burning.

Fourth of all, FRIENDS/ VISITORS, of which there will be two tomorrow

One of the reasons why this is a promo blogpost for the next four blogposts and not a blogpost in its own right (although it is obviously, being a blog post), is because Trish and Keith are coming in seventeen hours and four minutes. Hooooray!!! We're very excited, me and Percy (yes, he's still here, he spent last weekend looking for bears in Bear Cove and didn't find any, but found a big mess of mossies), too excited to marshall our thoughts. But we have set Thursday aside for a massive four hour blogging extravaganza so Friday's the day.

And my clothes are coming.

And my boots.

And my handbags.

And my red suede jacket.

And my blue one.

And my lovely pink cardi.

And my nice skirt from Paris.

And my white coat.


......................... I'm so superficial...........................

Anyway, it's late and I have to get the room ready for the visitors *hoooray* and the phone hasn't stopped ringing all night with Oilean Fada-ers telling me their side of whatever domestic drama it is tonight so I should go do some perfunctory pillow plumping or something. Or maybe just jig up and down on the spot in excitment for another couple of hours.

Jig jig jig jig jig jig jig jig jig jig........

That really annoying Coke ad is in my brain for the last four hours, you know the one - holidays are comin', holidays are comin', holidays are comin'.... and then the Montreal train went past and went 'whooo' at the right moment (did I mention I live near the rail tracks? They're just across the road behind the trees).

‘Just cut its horns off and wipe its ass’ is no longer in my lexicon

Photo swiped from The Guardian's holiday snap competition winners gallery - ta very much. My entry was better by the way.

What a week. And it not even over yet. But only one more day before I can get back into my jeans, pack a bag and sink into a seat on the bus that will carry me north to River John and Margaret and Ian, who will hopefully help me make sense of all of this.

Fuelling up for the day

I got up early on Monday and put on a dress and some slap, which was very strange, and ate breakfast which I never used to do but which I’ve done every day since I came to Canada, to the utter amazement of my stomach which has responded by demanding outrageous amounts of food almost immediately again, or by ten am at the latest. So now, I have juice and cereal and a bagel and coffee and some eggs for breakfast, and then I bring another big bagel and some biccies to work in a bag, along with my sangidges and my fruit and my trail mix. I am ashamed to admit that on Tuesday morning the bag was empty by 11.20am. And by empty, I mean the inside of the biccie bag had been fingernail scraped to get at the last of the chocolate chips.

Well, it is a long walk, up two steep hills. And I am relieved to report that I still actually take the food out of the bag with my hands, despite my rapacious stomach begging me to dive nose first into it. All of this, I seem to recall, was why I stopped having breakfast in the first place, it being too expensive to have an energetic metabolism in Ireland. However, it’s okay here, because food is cheap, and fair trade restaurants abound, that do things like ‘not charge you for the coffee if you buy any food item’ or at the very least, ‘not rip you off utterly like those shysters in Dublin’. And I can feed myself out of the supermarket really well for about $120 a week, which is about €80.

‘Just cut its horns off and wipe its ass’ is no longer in my lexicon

One of the interesting things that has happened is that I have pretty much stopped eating meat, for a number of reasons. I am living in the Maritimes, so there is a lot of cheap fish. I have learned how to cook tofu. If not to enjoy it yet. Not ever, I reckon, although Yoichi’s miso soup is as close as I’ve ever gotten to culinary heaven (apart from those goldleaf-coated truffles we had that one time in Thorntons.)

You’d know I’d cut down on the cigarettes, wouldn’t you… totally obsessed with food….

But mostly I’ve stopped eating meat because I can’t figure out where it comes from. And the organic stuff is mad money. I didn’t think that it would be a big deal, but when you come from a country where you probably passed the cow in your car at some point during its life, and the supermarket has a photo of the farmer in the meat section along with his address, it is not very appealing to think your steak came from some BSE infested factory-farm in Manitoba, or worse, Montana.

Even worse, the tofu place was located next to a chicken farm. Let’s just say, if it’s not free-range fowl, I’m not eating it. Ever.

Sobey's v Superstore

There’s no need anyway. Now that Dr. Atkins has been discredited and carbohydrates are back in, there are acres and acres of nice food to be had for a pittance in Sobey’s, or Atlantic Superstore, which are the two supermarket chains here. Atlantic Superstore is better, apparently. I had this confirmed for me at a dinner party last night, when one of the guests ‘fessed that she worked for Sobey’s and shopped in Superstore. There’s also Co-op, which is a community co-operative shopping concept they have here in Atlantic Canada, where you buy shares in the shop and get discounted food. But they don’t have one in Halifax. Well, they have the anarchist one on Agricola that made me so mad I put the bottles on the roof of the car last week, but I’m not joining that one, if they can’t even get their egg order right.

As I don’t spend money on anything except food (and books - I always think of that great quote from Erasmus, I think, that says 'when I have a little money I buy some books and if I have any left I get some food' at times like these) at the moment, going to the supermarket is A BIG DEAL. Back when, I whizzed around and bought more or less the same thing every week and then headed over to the wine section to see what was on offer. Now I have to check the price of everything and look out for bargains and try new things and it takes ages. And then I have to get a treat because all scrimping and no chocolate biscuits makes me practically suicidal, so I am methodically working my way through the cookies’ section. So far, the President’s Choice luxury dark chocolate double chip brand is a nose ahead. But I found apple fig rolls recently, which intrigued me. They’re not very nice though, and when I offered them to the Labradorians in Wentworth, they laughed and said they were really ‘old’ biscuits. Like Marietta, I suppose.

But how do they get the apples into the fig rolls?

Sorry.

I am the practically the only one who brings in shopping bags and packs them myself. The checkout women all think I’m great. They always mention it and talk about how great Ireland is that they’ve taxed the bags. They’re like the staff in Marks and Spencers – mostly middle-aged women and a few older men. And they have to stand for their whole shift – it’s appalling.

Anyway, how did we get onto workers’ rights in the Canadian retail sector? An interesting vignette into how my mind works, right there for you all. Nosebag – plastic bag – evil corporate bastards. Obvious really.

‘Canadian fantastic healthcare system a complete myth’ shocker

Work, Queenie, tell them about work!

Oh yeah, work. Well, I went into Just Us! for coffee on the way into work on my first day. And there was this reasonably cute guy in there and he was smiling at me, so I smiled back at him, and then he said “So you decided to rejoin the workforce again”, and I was completely shocked – how did he know? Was I walking funny? Was my makeup on all wrong? Was my dress on backwards? What, what? And then I realised it was MY NEW BOSS I was talking to.

Muppet…I am going to have to get my eyes lasered or just start wearing my glasses all the time.

Ooooooh, a thought occurs to me, I wonder does my Medicare cover it? Apparently, I have the hard-core Medicare that only government employees get, that kicks in immediately and covers shiatsu massage and prescription sunglasses and teeth-whitening treatments and crap like that. For seven dollars a week or something like that. Jammy, eh! Canadian government employees look after themselves better than Irish ones. And that’s saying something.

By the way, amusingly, the key problems in the Canadian healthcare system are: - waiting lists, step-down beds for elderly patients, lack of primary care in rural areas, inability to get consultants to work in local hospitals, and the growing emergence of a two-tier care system.

Although to give them their due, they don’t seem to have psychotic obstetricians what take women’s wombs out for personal reasons, or consultants taking swipes at each other and calling each other the N word.

Work!!!!!!!!

Ahem, this is all work-related, really.

Anyways, I got escorted into the building by my new boss, who’s only a couple of years older than me. And very nice. He’s recently had issue, so that’s what he talks about mostly. So he’s normal anyway. And he takes Fridays off to look after said issue, which is always nice to see in a bloke with a high-powered job.

So I said to him, jokingly, what’s all this about a hurricane* alert? And he said, it’s quite possible there will be one.

(* Some of you will know what I mean by hurricane, some of you won’t. Sorry about that, fling us an email if you’re confused.)

So that’s great, first day on the job and I’m thinking I might have to weather a hurricane, and depending on how destructive it is, I might be hurtling across country with an empty wallet and a sense of déjà vu. But you know, that’s okay, because that’s what this year is about. Learning new ways of doing things. Except I have a lot of experience with hurricanes.

Anyways, I’ll continue before I completely confuse my two readers who are not personal friends.

An hour passes...

Well, I just spent an hour on the phone to New Jersey Girl, so I’m pooped and the tale of my first week in work will have to wait until another day, as I’m going to bed now.

I apologise for the state of this post. I am very tired.

Tuesday 9th August

He is almost always a slave that cannot live on a little.
- Horace

Where profit is, loss is hidden nearby.
- Japanese proverb

The One Hundredth Post

Queenie and Percy are pleased to announce that this is the one hundredth post on Percy's Depressed.

In honour of the occasion, of the fact that I have a Japanese friend now (see photo), which I never did before, and in remembrance of the nuclear atrocity that was visited on Japan in the name of freedom sixty years ago, I have written a haiku.

I wrote it on South St on a windy summer's evening. I was on the way into Halifax city for my first night out in my new home. We were going to see KillRadio (an anti-Bush band from LA) in The Attic, the city's most happening live venue. I was very excited. It was the culmination of eight months planning and thinking and travelling.

Unfortunately, Queenie couldn't get into the Attic, because she didn't have a 'scannable ID', whatever that is when it's at home. Her sources tell her Halifax bouncers are not a nice breed.....sigh...

Anyways.....

Wind-tossed trees on South

Heave sibilant summer sighs

But not me tonight

Raymond of the Rooftops, by Paul Durcan

The morning after the night
The roof flew off the house
And our sleeping children narrowly missed
Being decapitated by falling slates,
I asked my husband if he would
Help me put back the roof:
But no - he was too busy at his work
Writing for a women's magazine in London
An Irish fairytale called Raymond of the Rooftops
Will you have a heart, woman - he bellowed -
Can't you see I am up to my eyes and ears in work,
Breaking my neck to finish Raymond of the Rooftops,
Fighting against time to finish Raymond of the Rooftops,
Putting everything I have got into Raymond of the Rooftops?

Isn't it well for him? Everything he has got!

All I wanted him to do was to stand
For an hour, maybe two hours, three at the most,
At the bottom of the stepladder,
And hand me up slates while I slated the roof:
But no - once again I was proving to be the insensitive,
Thoughtless, feckless even, wife of the artist.
There I was up to my fat, raw knees in rainwater
Worrying him about the hole in our roof
While he was up to his neck in Raymond of the Rooftops.
Will you have a heart, woman - he bellowed -
Can't you see I am up to my eyes and ears in work,
Breaking my neck to finish Raymond of the Rooftops,
Fighting against time to finish Raymond of the Rooftops,
Putting everything I have got into Raymond of the Rooftops?

Isn't it well for him? Everything he has got!

For AMD, who knew Paul.
Sleep well. x

Hnefetafl and peek-a-boo bears in Wentworth Valley

Photos under the title - click on it to see them.

So I decided a few days quiet contemplation in the wooded Wentworth Valley would chase away the dragons.

The first challenge was getting there. One of the myths the rest of the world has about Canada is that it is in some way better than everywhere else. Consequently, everyone reasons, it has better public services.

NOT TRUE

Well, not in Nova Scotia anyway. Apparently Alberta is better, because Alberta has oil. The fact that Nova Scotia also has oil is, apparently, irrelevant.

Fact 1: Nova Scotian roads are worse than Indian roads.
Fact 2: Nova Scotian public transport routes are a load of steaming you know what.

So I get on the bus with my free newspaper, that I get when I travel on Acadian Bus. Which is fantastic, except I’d prefer they ploughed the newpaper money into sending the buses where I want to go. This time I get dropped off at a liquor store, six kilometres from the hostel. Normally, that isn’t a problem, but I have four days worth of food, as well as my laptop and my rucksack with me. I cross the road and stick my thumb out.

A Mercedes Benz screeches to a halt within a minute of me doing so. I get in. The Asian guy driving it is fascinated with my lack of a motor and insists on driving me right to the door of the hostel. Up a dirt road. Bless him.

Welcome to the Hostel California

Paul comes out to greet me. Paul is the manager of the Wentworth Hostel. I am the guest. The only guest. Apart from two guys camped out back. As he checks me in Paul tells me that he has learned how to play Korean chess. Nice. Apparently, it’s not as difficult as Japanese chess, which he also recently learned. I see two makeshift chess sets on the table in the lounge. I wonder whether I am supposed to offer to play him, but there’s no point as I can’t even play normal chess, so I say ‘don’t worry, I won’t make you learn how to play Irish chess’. That goes down like a lead banana.

I settle in, and Paul takes me for a walk up to the Look Off.

A Look Off is any spot in Nova Scotia high enough to enable you to survey the surrounding landscape. As Nova Scotia is mostly flat, there aren’t many Look Offs, so I ooh and aah with what I hope is an appropriate level of enthusiasm for a view that isn’t half as spectacular as what you get in the Slieve Blooms.

As we walk home, the talk turns to bears, as it so often does in Canada. Paul tells me a story about a woman who got eaten by a grizzly when out jogging with two friends somewhere in Alberta. The other two got away. She made the fatal error of climbing a tree. I ask whether there are bears here. Paul reassures me that they’re not a problem, unless for example, I was walking quietly and rounded a corner and surprised one. Particularly a female with a cub.

Back down to the hostel and onto the porch to read my book in the sunshine. I am reading about the Acadians, who were deported from Nova Scotia because they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. I think I’ve mentioned them before. Their annual memorial took place in Grand Pre a few days ago and I missed it because they didn’t tell me about it. George thinks they deserved it anyway. That’s because he’s English.

One of the two campers emerges from his tent, where he has consumed something that caused his eyes to glaze over completely. His name is David Tobin and he’s from Labrador. I ask him what Labrador means. Something Indian he says. I wonder. La Bras d’Or, I always thought. The other Labradorian is called Sean Sheppard. They could be from Kinnitty.

Pasta and Politics

Dinner-time and I rattle round the kitchen by myself cooking dinner. Paul has disappeared into his private quarters. He is writing a PhD in Computer Science so I assume that’s what he’s up to. I find a collection of back issues of MacLeans magazines. They’re the Canadian Magill. I read all the political articles, to try to familiarise myself with federal politics. I am struck by the amount of bile emanating from the journalists. Mostly directed at those lazy politicians who use bile to score points off each other. I wonder am I spotting the irony because I am a newcomer. Probably not.

I notice an article about a festival of documentaries. One of them is about a Canadian guy who stalked and filmed grizzly bears so avidly he got himself and his girlfriend eaten by one in Alaska. Someone else pulled his footage together to create the documentary, which also contains an interview with the coroner who took four plastic sacks of human remains from the dead grizzly’s stomach.

The Labradorians light a fire in the firepit, so I go outside to join them. They’re nice. Really laid back. We don’t talk much, just stare at the fire. I try to slow down my speech to match theirs. It’s difficult for me. We play a few games of the international backpackers card game – Shithead. We have a beer, which is very bold because HI Hostels are alcohol free. But we’re outside, so we get by on a technicality. We talk about hockey. Sidney Crosbie the Nova Scotian wunderkid got picked first in the NHL draft on Friday, so all of Halifax is abuzz with excitement.

Yeah, whatever, I hear you say. Aaaah, you’ll be hearing a lot more about hockey soon, boys and girls.

Queenie and the bears

Next morning, the sun wakes me at 5.45 because there are no curtains in the Wentworth Hostel. I drowse until nine, then get up and make breakfast. Still no sign of Paul. I lie on the couch in the lounge and finish my book on the Acadians. I am preparing to write an article on them to pitch to a newspaper. The morning passes along tickety boo.

The Labradorians come in to say goodbye.

Paul emerges from his quarters intermittently and logs onto the internet and types furiously for a few minutes. Then disappears again. Either he’s at a critical point in his PhD, or he’s gaming. I know which one my money’s on.

After lunch I go for a hike, even though it’s starting to rain. I get about twenty yards into the beautiful, deciduous forest and stop dead. What if I disturb a bear? I start having a mild panic attack. I cannot move my legs. I cannot propel myself forward. I turn and scuttle out into the meadow where Paul showed me the blueberry bushes. Then I remember that bears eat blueberries! I scuttle back into the forest. I stand there, petrified. I want someone to come get me and take me back to the hostel where the bears can’t eat me. But nobody’s going to come get me, are they! I have to get back there by my ownself.

Eventually, the rational part of my brain overcomes the irrational part enough to let me pull myself together a bit. I make myself walk along the track, but I have completely terrified myself and I see bears everywhere. Mostly they turn out to be logs (see photo). I hear a branch snap and I am halfway up a tree before I realise that’s the wrong thing to do. At this point, I lose it completely.

A few minutes of petrified quivering later and I am so annoyed with myself. I decide to make myself go for a hike, despite the danger. I will make a lot of noise, thereby warning the bears of my approach, so that they will run away. I walk along the track singing The Teddy Bears' Picnic.

If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise
For every bear that ever there was, yes sometin’, sometin’ sometin’
Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic!

The rain has gotten really heavy, but I cannot put up my hood because it will muffle the sound of bears approaching and reduce my peripheral vision. I am increasingly convinced that there is something behind me. I keep turning around suddenly, but whatever it is keeps ducking behind a tree so I can’t see it.

Gradually, over the course of about thirty minutes, my fears subside enough for me to enjoy my hike a little bit. I eventually forget about bears.

Paul the amazing conversationalist

I get home and change out of my wet clothes. I decide to begin the article on the Acadians, so I start reading the guest book in order to empty my brain so I can write. All the entries follow similar lines:

Thank you Paul for a wonderful time. For sharing your life experiences with me. For the fantastic company and conversation. I’ll definitely be back.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

I wonder what the problem is with me. Every time I try to start a conversation with him, he looks like he’s seen a bear and runs away.

Never mind.

I spend a couple of hours writing the article on the Acadians. Then I cook dinner. The woman from next door comes in and barks at Paul. She wants him to walk her dog while she’s away. It turns out she’s the President of Hostelling Nova Scotia, so I suppose he has to. As soon as she’s gone he disappears.

Then some Germans appear to retrieve a map they lent him. As soon as they’re gone he disappears again.

I give up at eleven and go to bed. One of my roommates in the Halifax hostel gave me the new Harry Potter book so tomorrow is sorted.

Paul the amazing conversationalists, part two

Strike that second last sentence. I was just going to bed when Paul appeared and engaged me in reasonably intellectual conversation for three hours. The subjects were:

- whether or not third level institutions should charge fees
- whether or not we are over-educating our young people
- the approaching environmental disaster and how we can persuade people that they must do something
- ancient board games, on which subject our Paul is a bit of an expert. He has a Viking board game called Hnefetafl which he is going to teach me how to play
- the recent terrorist attacks in London (where Paul lives when he’s not running the hostel)
- public transport in Canada
- whether or not Europe is a better place to live than Canada

I had to read Harry Potter for an hour before I could go to sleep.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is...

… very long. And is reasonably good. It has too much of an eye to the screenplay, but I suppose the poor girl is trying to get as much of it done as she can. The Quidditch matches are crap. The enormous spoiler at the beginning of the book doesn’t work. Not doing it would have added to the shock horror bit at the end. And she doesn’t quite get the lustful Harry, although I think she makes a good stab at it.

Afterwards I went for a very long hike. I took some photos – they’re under the title as usual – and I was less worried about bears. But there were still a couple of tree stumps that made me jump out of my skin. As I walked I realised that the bear thing is a metaphor for the work thing. So maybe that’s why it happened. I don’t usually freak out like that.

Hnefetafl, on the other hand is...

… excellent and I will find some way to get you all to start playing so we can have a league when I get home.

Basically, it’s on a board that’s 13 x 13. There are two players. One has 20 pieces, arranged in groups of five on each edge of the board. The other has twelve pieces and the king. The king is in the centre square, the twelve pieces are clustered round him in a diamond.

The king has to get to an edge square to win. The other player has to stop him by surrounding him on four sides (to make a cruciform shape). Moves can only be made vertically and horizontally (like the rook in chess). The king cannot move more than three squares at a time. You capture an opposing piece by surrounding him on two sides.

It’s very difficult. You have to think in four dimensions. Well, four directions in two dimensions. I think. I always do very badly in spatial stuff in those brainiac quizzes. Then, once you get one side's moves a little bit sorted out in your head, you have to switch to the other side and it’s completely different. I prefer it to chess though - I like the fact that there are two different games within one. I think I am hooked already. I have to find someone to play with me. Poor Yoichi……….

Home sweet home at last

I left the hostel today and hiked back down to the liquor store. I had to ring the bus company the day before to get them to come this way to pick me up. They forgot. When I rang, they were really apologetic. They had to send an empty bus back from Truro to get me. It was great fun.

Now I’m in my new house. I’ve unpacked all my stuff for the first time in a couple of months. Ganesh is on the wall. The dragonfly chimes are in the window, so are the candles. The dragon and the cat are on the bedside table. (Thanks to everyone for the gifts)

So I suppose this is the end of the beginning, isn't it.

Just before dawn on the Minas Basin

Queenie had an emotional roller-coaster of a week last week. The long soft landing had gone to my head a little bit I think. Last week, the runway of reality loomed up with a velocity that almost unseated me. But I’ve steadied again. Not without a few tears though.

After my Long Island escapades, I went back to Grand Pre and busied myself there for a couple of days, before heading up to Halifax to look for somewhere to live. Of course, I started to miss Long Island as soon as I left it, as I knew I would. At least the weekend is the weekend there, unlike the farm, where the weekend is when most of the work gets done.

The vibe on the farm was a lot tenser than when I left it. I don’t know what happened while I was away and it’s none of my business. Yoichi and Janna, the German wwoofer, had both left for Halifax, so maybe the family dynamics aren’t so good when there isn’t company. The first day there was a Saturday, so I did the farmers market in Wolfville, which was very pleasant, before tackling the hillside jungle of docks and clover that is their lawn. No wonder I have big muscles in my arms, dragging the lawnmower up and down that slope.

I actually have scarily big biceps at the moment. For a girl that is.

Sunday was even more tense, with tears and slammed doors, so I ended up bringing the youngest to the pub for a couple of hours to try and relax her. As we drove home, the most beautiful moon I’ve seen in Canada so far was rising over the hill at the back of the farmhouse. It was the continuation of the full moon I experienced on Long Island, but the orb seemed closer to earth, more rounded and more golden down here in the Annapolis Valley. Its pull has had a profound effect on my body in the last two weeks, which was a bit freaky at the time, but it’s great to be back in sync with it. However, the house was early to bed as usual, so I couldn’t watch it for long.

Searching for a home from home

Monday morning, I got the Acadian Bus to Halifax and for a while it was nice to wander the streets and drink a proper cup of coffee and be the mistress of my own hours. Even though I was house hunting. To my surprise I found myself getting a little bit stressed. Nothing like I was in Ireland, but still, the heart rate was up a bit and I was tetchy. It was strange to feel stressed, not having felt like that for two months now. I was in for worse, though, as Monday and Tuesday both were made up of fruitless hours pounding the pavements.

Monday in particular was awful – it poured rain all afternoon and I wandered the streets phoning numbers on To Rent signs all around the South End, only to find the flats were unfurnished. Then I viewed the flat from hell, you know, the one you ended up in at the beginning of second year in college when you had no money and no sense. This time I took advantage of my opportunity to have a go at a rackrenter, and I let fly at my proposed landlord, asking him how in the name of God could he stand over his statement to me on the phone that this was a nice apartment, when it was blindingly obvious that it was nothing more than a damp, basement, cockroach infested firetrap. With no windows. The cheek of him, wasting my time like that.

I felt great afterwards.

A wet Monday night

Back at the hostel though, reality began to seep through the cracks in my defences and I felt really disoriented and a bit lonely. It was raining. In Halifax, when it rains, it RAINS. A sweet little Australian girl, on her way to Winnipeg to work at a Christian mission there, comforted me a bit, and we talked about why we found ourselves meeting each other, halfway across our worlds, in a small room with six beds and no curtains in a wet city on a Monday night. What drove us to do this? We neither of us had an answer for ourselves that night.

After we put the lights out, I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I lay worrying about my job, about my house hunting, about money, about my job again, about whether I would be able to make the enormous intellectual leap they are asking of me. How am I supposed to get up to speed on the political system of a completely different COUNTRY in a couple of weeks? Not to mention learning the policy ropes. Not to mention figuring out all the nuances of the party and the provincial legislature. Not to mention coming up with innovative ideas. Not to mention doing it all at the speed of a parliamentary day, which is something akin to the speed of light. Not to mention doing it with forty people wanting me to make a mess of it, so they can get the job. I eventually fell asleep. I dreamt of my days back with the old party, the old fear of fucking up came back and prowled around me again, and when I woke I could taste its metallic tang on my tongue. I didn’t want to face the day at all.

Tuesday with a morose Yoichi

After a morning of phone calls that weren’t providing me with many leads, I met up with Yoichi, who was in a foul mood as well. Unsurprisingly, he is not yet fluent in English after just two weeks of classes, so he was engaging in that most Japanese of pastimes, metaphorically battering himself around the head for not being perfect. I really wasn’t in the mood for it, having spent the previous evening doing it to myself, so we spent a couple of hours sitting morosely nursing our Tim Horton’s cups, looking out at the sea. He was silent because he wouldn’t say anything unless he could construct the sentence perfectly. I was silent because I was panicking about what I was doing with my life. Finally we separated, as I had to view a house. Two minutes later, my prospective landlady cancelled. The evening stretched out endlessly in front of me, so I ran to the ferry terminal, but Yoichi had already gone back to Dartmouth. I felt so alone.

Wednesday, the sun blazed down on Halifax and everyone’s mood lightened as they looked forward to the long weekend. My new boss emailed me and didn’t appear to have any misgivings about hiring me. Some woman called Jill rang to say the room she thought she had let had become available again, so did I want to view it? I still can’t figure out who she was, or how I got in contact with her. I don’t remember ringing a Jill. Anyways, suddenly I had three places to view in one day. I’ll have to get one of them, I thought.

Finding a south end address

I have walked the length and breadth of Halifax city (not suburbs) at this stage. It’s quite compact, with the residential areas all situated very close to downtown. They are mostly blocks of detached clapboard houses on small lots, with trees lining the streets and very little traffic. I had pretty much resigned myself to having to trade proximity to the centre for access to a garden, having spent two days struggling with this decision. The first viewing was almost what I wanted, although it was just a bit far out, and not fantastic enough to merit the distance. Nevertheless, as I walked away I felt that at least I had something do-able in the bag.

When I looked at my map I realised I could walk down to the sea on the other side of the isthmus upon which the south end of the city is built and follow it round to the second house on my list. That was how I discovered why everyone said I should live in the south end. The road cuts through a big park, then meanders along a series of beautiful streets, with big hedges hiding gorgeous houses and large gardens with mature plants and trees. I found my street, Beaufort Avenue – the fourth house down, the yellow one, she had said on the phone – and suddenly I rounded a bend in the road (an actual bend in the road, boys and girls) and there it was. It was love at first sight and I had three hours to go until I viewed it. I went and sat in the Public Gardens and bit my nails.

Thankfully, I got it and signed the lease on the spot.

So now I have a home at last and it’s very nice. The rent is EU340 a month, which includes all electricity, heat, water, cable, phone and hi-speed wireless internet costs. As well as all my sheets and towels and blankets, which saves me a major expense.

I walked back to the hostel down South St. and the sun was shining and I realised this would be my walk to and from work. The DalPlex sports complex is five minutes from the house, as is the sea. Suddenly, it all seemed plausible, workable, manageable again. Yoichi and I went to the pub to celebrate. I had a pint of IPA and he had two pints of some Guinness-like concoction they make here which is quite nice. Then he brought me to a really serious looking Japanese restaurant for sushi. We were having a rare old time, trying to get my hands to mould into the right shape for using chopsticks, and failing miserably, when I got a text message from my mother with some bad news. Which brought me right back down again, and discomfited Yoichi terribly, as he is not used to western displays of emotion. He finally decided to deal with it by eating all of the sushi except for the piece I had ruined by my tears plopping onto it.

Back to Wolfville for the last time

I had promised the farm family that I would work at the Farmers’ Market in Halifax on Saturday, but I had asked them to pay me this time, to cover my expenses in the hostel. We agreed on fifty dollars – which is outrageously low, but never mind. However, as I had found a house there was no reason to stay in Halifax, so I decided to go back to Wolfville and stay until Saturday. That way I could help with the preparations for the market and save the family fifty bucks.

I returned to complete chaos. I kept my head down and cooked dinner for everyone. There was a new wwoofer, a sixteen year-old home-schooled vegetarian called Zephyr, so I cooked tofu. Which is so boring. There was nothing else to eat, though. The atmosphere was so tense that afterwards I watched a dvd on the laptop in my room. After three days of broken sleep in the hostel, my body relaxed in the quiet of the countryside and I slept in until ten. I got up just as they were leaving to bring the produce to Halifax for the market. Oops!

When they were safely gone, Ron sloped over for a fag and a moan. He and the youngest had had a fight. He didn’t go into the details, but I assumed he had wound her up too much as usual. Then he told me they’d been moaning about having to pay me for the market. He shouldn’t have. But he was mad with them.

As I pushed the lawnmower around their endless, ever-growing acre of grass for the fourth time in a month, I began to get so angry about it I could spit. I tried not to. I wasn’t supposed to know this, so I shouldn’t get mad. And they were short of cash. And I hadn’t mentioned the fact that I wasn’t going to charge them.

But still.

The darkest hour

Next morning, I was up at 4.45am. It was still pitch black outside, with no stars or moon to relieve it. The darkest hour truly is before the dawn. As we drove through the valley, the sun came up over the Minas Basin and streaked the sky boldly in scarlet and shocking pink and orange. I thought about the funeral that was taking place at home. I wished I were in Springtown with my friends, not in Halifax selling tofu to hippies for a woman who didn’t think a day of my labour was worth a miserly fifty bucks. When she offered me the money at the end of the day I refused to take it. She didn’t need to be told twice.

Although cynicism is at best not constructive and at worst destructive and there’s too much of it in the world, the problem with idealism is that people always let you down in the end. One of the questions I often ask myself is how do I find a steady state in which to operate that exists somewhere between these extremes?

After the market, we had to do deliveries. It was very hot. I was very tired and cranky and the car was stuffed with boxes, bags and coolers. We got to the Grainery, which is an anarchist co-operative foodstore. Their order was under a box of glass soy milk bottles. I eventually unearthed it. When I brought the order in the three people in the shop, none of whom had phoned in the order, started having a row about whether or not they needed the eggs.

I pointed out that they had ordered them, so it was irrelevant whether or not they needed them. They argued some more. Eventually we agreed to take them back. I made a couple of narky remarks and shoved the egg box back into the car and we took off. Muttering to each other about feckin' hippies and how disorganised they are. We drove up Robie and stopped at the lights. Two rednecks in a pick up truck pulled up beside us and grinned down at me.

Oh, for God's sake, I thought, ignoring them.

"Miss, do you know you've got a box of glass bottles sitting on the roof of your car?"

"Oh shit!"

I jumped out and rescued the box and as I got back in the lights turned green and we sped off buckled with laughter.

Sitting on the dock of the bay

After all that, I was exhausted. I sat in the blazing sunshine on a rock in a deserted corner of Halifax harbour. Which is the second biggest natural harbour in the world apparently, after Sidney. The Mi’kmaq called it Chebucto, which means ‘great harbour’. I watched the tall ships and cruisers, motor boats and yachts go by. At one point they were dwarfed by an enormous container ship bearing a Swedish flag that boomed its foghorn majestically as it headed out to sea. I wrote a letter to a friend. After a couple of hours, I heard someone on the rocks behind me and looked round to see Yoichi, who had left the library early and found me somehow. He took his flip-flops off and rolled up his trousers and splashed around in the water like a four year old until he got me to laugh.

Yeah, it was a tough week in more ways than one. But I’ve decided to stop imagining dragons for a bit. Life is too short to be scared.