Andrew's an Auld Dog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A blast from the past: and they say the Left used to be hardline!

This is an excerpt from a document I am reading from 1999, from a leading business organisation in the city of Halifax.

"An important consideration, in any case, is the meaning of 'a job'. To a considerable extent political discourse over the past 50 years has classifed jobs as a commodity. Jobs are 'saved' or 'lost', with the underlying belief that the retention of each existing job is a significant social benefit.

It could not be farther from the truth. Jobs are not an output. With land and capital they are one of the three basic inputs to every production process. It is the objective of every manager interested in effective production - whether they are in the public or the private sector - to reduce all of these inputs. To do otherwise is to waste resources.

The use of too many people to produce a product or service displaces resources that could be applied to beneficial purposes. It usually also increases the use of the other inputs such as land and resources. This has environmental consequences."

I do love it when the chamber of commerce worries about the environment.

Red carpet: six

6. Ireland is at the end of the cycle, and Nova Scotia is at the beginnning of the cycle.

So there is something amazing that we could create together if we just sat down for an hour and talked about it.

I have to find a way to say this without saying the name of a place that they can't drive to.

Music

The Burial album Untrue is very good.

Fuck, I hope I'm right about this.

I love the journeys it takes me on.

They're very eighties I find.

The echo in it reminds me of stuff I used to listen to.

Etched Headplate is so Prince for example.

Roll out the red carpet: five

Well, why should I do all the thinking?

What do you think?

Therein lies the question.

The workin' man here doesn't want us because he's just at the point where there's such a need for increased productivity that maybe, just maybe, the bossman might consider giving him a proper raise....

.... and there's the payment on the satellite radio in the truck...

... and the truck payment of course...

... and the Golf...

... and the four wheeler...

... and the new kitchen...

... and the fishing camp...

... that means the Home Depot card...

... and the Canadian Tire...

... and the PC card...

Why is there not an NDP card or a Liberal card?

Anyways, I think us immigrants are going to find ourselves in the midst of the battle for the hearts and minds of the workers.

I am happy to sit it out. It might prove interesting enough to be congratulated for surviving it.

I sure as hell aren't going to invite my friends over any more though.

And I'm not voting for more health spending.

Back to the red carpet.

4. Maybe you should treat your own workers well.

Then they'd tell other people to come here.

That's how it works by the way.

Red carpets: off-carpet

Well, I tidied a bit. And opened a bottle of wine. And I shall eat eventually I imagine.

And I am listening to music.

On my own.

I am reading a Paul Theroux paperback at the moment. I keep finding these 1980s classics that I never read when I was young.

This one is his trip around the British Isles. By foot and train. It was before Thatcher got rid of the trains.

Everyone was in a state of panic. The Falkland War was on.

Jonathan Raban wrote one at the same time. From the sea. And they met for lunch in Brighton.

And it all looked really calm from the sea.

And Theroux keeps wondering why everyone stands looking out to sea.

And he's so paranoid you know he's wondering if they're waiting for Raban.

It's a brilliant juxtaposition.

Rolling out the Red Carpet

This shall be my theme this weekend.

Yes, I have decided to have a theme.

Maybe that would force me to blog through guilt.

The pr company that my recent boss recently absconded to with all the knowledge of the Justice portfolio and gas regulation and other things (damned knowledge workers and their portable brains) is asking people how Nova Scotian businesses should roll out the red carpet for immigrants.

I thought I should come up with a few ideas.

I shall be mulling it over the weekend.

Here's a couple of starters.

1. Pay us properly.

2. No? In lieu of that, gissa chance at getting the jammy jobs. Why should they all go to well-connected locals with funny college rings on their fingers?

3. No? In lieu of that, don't promote Nova Scotia for its quality of life and then work us to death.

Queenie goes off to tidy up, eat, open a bottle of wine for to continue mulling.

It's safe to go back on the road now.

I sent an email around work on Thursday morning, saying I was going home with some work I have to get done by Monday, and mentioning that I was doing my driving test at 3.30pm, so not to call me then.

"And we should all probably stay off the road then too", was the smartass reply from one of my colleagues.

Haha.

Well, it's safe to go back on the road now because I passed my test.

It was actually pretty easy. Or it would have been if I had been able to breathe normally during the test. As it was, I took every opportunity at a traffic light to try to release my death grip on the steering wheel and breathe out from the pit of my stomach, so that I would breathe in again and not pass out from lack of oxygen.

While I was waiting in the test centre, a young girl came in to do her test. She was wearing a pair of denim shorts, fishnet thigh high stockings and a pair of white runners.

Attagirl.

I remember when I wore stuff like that.

Not in a Canadian November of course. Nor for my driving test.

But in the absence of large jangly earrings (for to ensure the tester knows you are looking at the mirrors) it was a show stopper.

The tester didn't know what to look at.

She passed her test of course.

I waited and waited and eventually a smallish man bundled in an enormous anorak, with a buzz cut and the kind of messed up face that would get him a role as the nasty drill sergeant in an edgy war movie came out and said 'Queenie?'.

Damn.

Turns out appearances are deceptive.

He had a South Shore accent, which is a mellifluous hillbilly type affair with just a hint of German in it and which I love. So that helped a little.

He checked my lights and brakes and indicators and horn and then he sat in with his big anorak squashing me into the side of the car, opened the window and said 'now we'll go straight out.'

I was parked nose to nose with a Lexus at a ninety degree angle to the two possible exit roads so I knew straight out was not literally what he meant.

Nova Scotians are nothing if not vague about directions. You go down to Cape Breton from Halifax. I go up to Cape Breton. I have had two hour rows with Cape Bretoners over this. You go up to Windsor. I go over. You go along the shore. I go up or down. You always go down the Valley. I go to the Valley and then down. Or up. Depending on where I'm starting from.

So I just asked, even though I wasn't supposed to talk to him. He waved vaguely in the direction of the road with the enormous puddle in it. The one with the blind spot and the sharp turn left and the ridiculous right of way system.

Great. I was sure it would have been the other one. I had even parked the car so I could easily reverse out to the other side.

I gingerly put the car in reverse and started backing out to the left, which I can't do properly, thinking, well, if I get past this bit without him writing on the sheet he had hidden by his enormous anorak I'm sorted.

Halfway through the nightmare of getting out of the carpark, turning left onto the feeder road, trying to figure out whether I could drive on the left to get past the puddle, gunning her through and up the hill, he swept his hand under the anorak and scribbled something.

Damn.

It was 3.45pm so it was rush hour in Halifax.

We did a lot of queuing for lights and I had to do the left hand turn onto Connaught from Chebucto which is a Kamikaze turn during a gap in the traffic at the best of times, then some more driving around Halifax's key arterial roads, changing lanes between the hurtling SUVs and then he directed me into a residential area and got me to park along the kerb.

Empty kerb mind. No cars to park between like in Ireland. Except there were so many leaves on the side of the road you couldn't actually see the grass kerb.

Not that that bothered a girl who learned how to parallel park with her father and assorted farmers/ vets/ assistants/ office staff and neighbours standing around with their arms folded and big grins on their faces every time.

After I parked he said good.

I nearly died of shock. It wasn't that good. Just straight and flush to the kerb, like it's supposed to be.

The Queen Father would have been proud.

"Now, we'll start again", he said, "this is your hill start."

It was almost flat. Dundrum Hill it wasn't. I had a brief memory flash of my first test, trying to hill start the Charade on Dundrum Hill with an enormous instructor and a broken clutch (which I didn't realise at the time) before I put failure OUT of MY MIND and drove through a four way stop without even realising it was there.

Double damn.

Then we tootled back onto the main road and back to the carpark, where I reversed parked the car assways into the slot twice, leaving no room on the passenger side either side because I can't get used to turning my head right to reverse. I had a third try in reserve, but I had had enough at that point, so I just gave up and turned off the engine.

"You might want to throw your eye over your shoulder occasionally, check your blind spots, just using the mirrors isn't enough", he said in his kind voice.

"And you didn't use your indicator on that first turn off."

"But that's alright now, there you go now, take this inside and give it to them."

I stared at him beseechingly.

"You've passed."

"Oh, thank you thank you thank you."

He smiled and opened the door the four inches I had left on his side and squeezed himself and his enormous anorak out and hobbled off.

I texted Himself.

Then I texted the Queen Mother.

Then I called the office and said it was safe to go back on the road.

Then I went to the liquor store and bought something to restore my nerves.

Boy am I glad that is over.

I ain't emigrating anywhere else ever again.

Another milestone...

In another milestone in Queenie's 'my early adult years were so great I did them twice, albeit with less fun the second time' current phase, today I am doing my driving test.

Those of you who know me know how stressful this is.

When I found out that I would have to do my driver's test again in order to function in Canada I nearly went home to Ireland.

Then I successfully avoided driving for two years.

Then I thought I'd pull the old 'driving on the provisional' stunt for another while. No luck. The provisional only lasts for thirty days if you're a come from away with a licence from another country.

So at three thirty today I will head down to Mumford and face the greatest of my fears. Again.

My hands are shaking so much I can hardly type.

Himself says I'm a good driver and not to worry. Also, I have the 3.30 slot, so buddy will want to go home and view me as a definite pass.

'You won't even get out of the carpark', he said to me last night as I was curled in a foetal ball of fear on the dining room floor.

If I was buddy, I'd throw the book of hard things in the test at me. Just to see how they teach people how to drive in Ireland.

Because I'd know what everyone else seems to have forgotten.

Queenie learned to drive on the wrong side of the road all those years ago.

You try to reverse parallel park a flippin' Ford Taurus estate backwards.

The Queen Father taught me to reverse before he taught me to drive. Therefore my reversing reflexes are innate and unreversable. Therefore, I always turn my head to the LEFT when I reverse.

WHICH IS THE WRONG WAY OF COURSE.

I woke up at four am this morning and lay awake turning my head to the right to try to imprint it on my brain.

It just feels wrong.

Ah well....

Hopefully, in a few hours I will have a Nova Scotia driver's licence and I will finally finally finally be done with this immigration business.

It's been a long, winding road, with me driving on the wrong side the whole way.

Ian was right and Queenie was wrong

Not for the first time.

M.I.A. is a most excellent album.

It just takes a while to get used to it.

The problem with a public diary...

... is that there are things you want to write about and you can't write about them, because so and so might read it and they can't know the thing yet.

If you get my drift.

So most of the stuff I want to write about at the moment I can't.

Which is why I'm not blogging.

Which is a pain in the ass.

So I told Himself I had to blog tonight or die, and He said, well don't write about the thing I was going to do but I didn't because **** might read it and he'd be annoyed.

Well, great then, I won't write about anything so.

OKaY, everyone has to stop reading my blog now before I implode under the strain of not sorting out how I feel about majorly important stuff in my life that I can't blog about because someone might read it and get annoyed.

I could just write in code....

Time passes while Queenie tries to come up with a code.

Well, Himself and I decided to do something really cool. And that was great for about ten seconds. And then the thing that always comes up and bites us in the ass when we try to make a forward move in that area of our lives came up and bit us in the ass again.

So we're on hold with the excited enthusiasm at the moment.

Also, the reaction from some people was all about them. When in fact it's all about me and Himself.

So they're not coming to the thing I can't talk about.

Are ye wit' me?

It's supposed to snow on Sunday.

Am I allowed to talk about snow, dear?

Yes, dear.

Snow is boring.

I got exciting new snow boots though. Goldy-brown zip ups with a fetching fur mid-shin tassle and two fake fur bobbles.

I'm very glad I'm in my thirties and get to wear them with jeans and a warm coat and not with a micro mini and a tee-shirt which is how all the young gamine things wear them now.

Himself is listening to CNN and I just yelled out 'I can't listen to that SHIT anymore and I realise that he's asleep.

FFS - I have been listening to racist bullshit for half an hour for no reason.

I'm no better nor worse than the others

...who profess to be bloggers and who don't update their blogs.

Although some of them aren't because they are in Italy writing novels, or dealing with plumbing emergencies, or in hospital, or vanished off the face of the earth pretty much (AMMONITE - where on earth are you?) etc.

None of them are not blogging because they are too boring to blog about anything.#

They are all not blogging because they are on Facebook.

Facebook is dreadful - it sucks away your writing urge in a desperate trawl of the dictionaries of the world to find a 55 score seven letter word beginning with Y and ending in a triple word score.

A CURSE ON IT.

The benefits of insomnia

Hobson's Choice

So today is Throne Speech day. For all you paddies, Throne Speech day is the day the Canadian parliament goes back into session (no, they haven't gone back to work yet - and they wonder why Canada is not competitive), the Governor General (a lovely Haitian lady called Michael Jean) reads out a speech written by the government (ie Stephen Harper) about all the work it's going to do for the next year.

Then everyone tries to jostle into a position whereby they can cause an election without actually getting blemt for it (as over 70% of Canadians don't want an election).

But Queenie, if there's an election, then the government won't get to do any of the work in the speech.

I know, boys and girls, I know.

Problem is, politics in Canada is staffed with people who have degrees in political science, as opposed to people who have degrees in economics, or sociology, education policy, or public administration. Consequently, they like to have elections.

Hobson's Choice Day: another year of Stephen Harper talking about carbon sequestration rather than wind power, or another effing election.

Grrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A poem for Jim

This is a poem posted in honour of the memory of one of my favourite people, who has gone Home after a long illness, to be with his wife and friend.

Jim Loftus

Husband to dearly missed Eileen, father to beloved Nabla and Roisin, father-in-law to Allan (and Shane), grandfather to Dara and the babies, godfather to many, including my brother Baz (of which I was always insanely jealous)...

History teacher to me and hundreds more, including the wonderful students in Nigeria he never forgot and often told us dreadful Irish students about (little birds with their mouths open, they wanted to learn so much)...

Good friend to the Queen Parents and dozens more...

Intellectual, wit, anarchist in his own way, owner of the greatest book collection I saw before I went to Trinity College library, crossword fanatic...

Trivial Pursuit cheat (not that he ever needed to)...

Mentor to me always, mostly with a grin at my naivety/ stupidity/ whatever, always with a kind word, a witty comeback and sound advice...

The subterfuge we both descended to in order to get in a round for each other, subterfuge I never won...

Wearer of red socks, pipe-smoker, dog-lover (Juko, Scamp, Flop, Fiddler)...

Clareman, no, Kilfenora man...

A man with stars in his eyes, the soul of a poet and the pointedness of a swordsman.

Goodbye Sir James. Sir.

My life is emptier for your absence.
My soul is better for your influence on it.

I'm sorry I crashed your car when I was three.
It wasn't Nabla's fault.
Honest.

It was mine.

Say hello to Eileen and Mr. O'Neill for me.
Tell Eileen I miss her dreadfully still.
Tell Mr. O'Neill I still can't call him Jimmy. And I still can't sing Pythagoras.

I'm sorry I didn't know the last time I saw you was the last time. But we had a nice chat in the kitchen that night didn't we.

A poem for the end of the century
By Czeslaw Milosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.

Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.

Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?

To a saintly man
--So goes an Arab tale--
God said somewhat maliciously:
"Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They could not praise you."

"And I," answered the pious one,
"Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They would not care for you."

To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?

Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.

Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity

It's nice to be reminded sometimes...

Himself is sick.

There we were, home at last on Friday, lazing around in the afterglow of a good week's work done (on Himself's part anyways), thinking about how we were going to spend the rest of the evening (after I had finished reading my Nordic detective novel - God knows, you can't get a word out of me when I'm tucked up reading one of them. And the library filled one of their 'don't know what to read?' wheelie units full of them and entitled it Snowy Death for my delection this week, saving me from even having to ferret them out), when suddenly Himself is throwing up into the toilet (I do love a man who throws up into the toilet. I went out with one who insisted on throwing up into the sink all the time and was then too sick to clean it up) and is lying in bed all hot and feverish and s-i-c-k....

I wiped him down with a damp cloth all Florence Nightingale-like, and resisted the urge to give him a whatchamacall it with it (I am not too up on the male dressing room lingo but you know what I mean).

No?

Well, I know what I mean and it's not as bad as it sounds.

Oh no, since I started typing he's arisen from the feverish near dead and is up and at the tomato soup!

Let's hope it works.

There's nothing worse than throwing up tomato soup.

After reading this out to Himself, he concurs.

It'll kill him or cure him.

Well, he can't be that sick if he's laying into soup and bread.

He was probably just making room for it, after his enormous Chinese takeaway dinner that Andy the big boss bought for them all for being such great workers.

Now we're onto the 'maybe it's the sludge that is killing me slowly' conversation.

Maybe.

I must check whether the company has paid up it's workers' compensation payments.

I am JOKING!

We are both just bone tired I think.

Today's exciting news is that it rained.

Proper rain. Sheets of it hurling itself against my office window. The clouds low over the harbour and the oil tankers and the Post-Panamax cargo ships looming out of them with a suddenness that is entertaining when you are desparately looking out of the window because the pile of work on your desk is so soul-destroying you would rather look at the rain.

With a 90kmph wind that skitters the water uphill so it looks like a river has jumped out of the harbour and is disobeying the forces of gravity on the slopes of the hill upon which downtown is piled.

I love when it rains like that. People stop and say: 'does it rain like that in Ireland, eh?' And I say: 'oh yes.'

'Most days.'

Their faces are a picture.

The other exciting news is that we bought a GPS unit. From a bloke in the AirForce base. For $75.

We ain't never getting lost in the woods again, nosirreebob.

Not that we ever did. But now, we can get out of the car, plot it on the GPS, break through the tree cover and go where we please.

We can get lost deliberately.

Hooray.

I think.

Which reminds me of another ex of mine who used to get lost on the mountains deliberately for the fun of it.

But who despised people with GPS units.

It is so nice to have a boyfriend who understands that I hate to

a) get lost in the woods for no effing reason, and

b) clean up other people's hurl.

Now if I could just get him to stay away from my nice tomato and basil soup that I had planned for later!

Bored with my blog

Yes, I am officially bored with my blog. Don't want to talk about politics or the environment; don't want to tell you all any more stories about domestic bliss, or wilderness camping, or work, or discuss my innermost feelings or anything.

Maybe it's the fact that someone advised me recently to do something positive with my spare time as my blog was really depressing and was probably depressing me.

I was a bit annoyed about that.

I didn't think it was depressing. I just thought it was normal.

Anyways, going to bed to read my uplifting book about the Armenian massacre of 1915 and think about

a) what we could do legislatively to eradicate poverty (they don't ask for much in work do they)

b) think about a whole new rant stream that is positive and uplifting and worth blogging about

c) maybe go to sleep at some point.

Had a nice trip in the grand tangier wilderness on Thanksgiving weekend.

Can't be arsed putting up the photos yet. Will do sometime.

Good night.

Frittering a day away on Facebook

Scrabulous..... English graduate crack.

That's all I have to say on the subject.

CBC have done a week's worth of Futurism on their morning radio show, with William Gibson on yesterday talking about animated tattoos. You go Bill. Everyone else was talking about computer chips in their brain, but that's so Necromancer...

Nobody was talking about the environment of course. (well, Gibson mentioned it in passing).

Typical geeks.

When I am the divine Lady of all Creation, I shall force geeks to do organic gardening and off-grid living challenges in their spare time. Which I will force their bosses to give them as part of the new carbon neutralising taxation plan.

They (the geeks), being the people who are good at solving problems (as opposed to the environentalists who are mostly good at pointing them out) will of course become enthused with their new regime (as they do about most things) and work together in loose collectives based around the globe to solve all the problems related therein using technology.

Et voila... the future will be shiny, with a fun, easy to operate user interface and most importantly, carbon neutral.

Then the stocks in their companies will spiral into heady heights of success and then they will all buy the new gliding boats that they have invented to travel the world.

Everybody wins.

Why has nobody done this already?

Ohmygosh it's so nice to have a day to myself at last.

What will I think about today. I am determined to only think happy thoughts until next Tuesday.

It's been a while I know

But I've been not in the mood for writing.

First I went to Digby for a three day think in for work which obviously I can't write about because it is work and therefore confidential. Then I came back to Halifax for a night before going back down to Digby on the way to the island for the weekend. Which was a non-event of a weekend as I volunteered to babysit while Himself went out. Then I had to go back to work. Then today I went back down to Digby with Himself to watch him sign his divorce papers.

Which is some sort of closure on the whole thing and which we should be happy about (if happy is an appropriate word for the end of a marriage), except that I am reeling from some bad news from home. And I have a pounding headache and a fever. Which means that either I won't be going canoeing and camping this weekend, or I will be with the remnants of a fever and a heavy heart.

When is this year going to improve?

It's nearly effing over. Maybe that's when.

Anyways.... stay safe everyone... there's too much pain around at the moment for my liking.