It’s very quiet.
Nobody is sitting in the garden reading a book without joining in the conversation, despite travelling thousands of miles to see his daughter. Nobody is tidying up after supper, despite being told not to because she is on her holidays. Nobody has gone for a little walk down the road to look at the sea. Nobody is telling me a bit of gossip I missed about someone at home. Nobody is opening a bottle of wine, or enjoying a can of Monkey Beer, which is quite the nicest beer in the world apparently, so nice he insisted he had to pay for it. Nobody is talking about the nice meal, which was well cooked, and it was fine that it was fish again.
Nobody is intently watching Himself barbeque the steaks, looking back at us to see what we think. Nobody is sitting quietly, listening to me as I rant about work, keeping an eye out to see would Himself roll his eyes at her.
He was their ally. I kept catching him at it. Having a little joke with them at my expense.
And when I'd express my outrage at him he'd just give me a look that said, Get up the yard. You muppet.
It was strange at times. I felt like I was playing myself in my own movie.
But I was one of the minor characters.
Very unnerving, I can tell you.
Thank goodness I have a blog.
What would I do otherwise?
Nobody is sitting around the table after dinner, talking about the war. Or remembering stories from our families. Or bickering with each other over something the Queen Dad did, or Queenie, or the Queen Mum.
I’d get a different look when that happened.
Himself has a very complex body language. Which I’m starting to learn.
I wonder what mine is like?
Some time is spent thinking about this.
I’m probably just pretty verbal.
I just wrote my first stage direction!
Some time is spent thinking about this.
There’s no effing money in theatre.
Except… I was reading a review of a book (this is how slack I am) about John Osbourne, the angry young man, and it turns out that he made a fortune from the theatre.
I wonder how he did that?
Some time is spent thinking about this.
Nah, don’t know. Time to move on.
Time passes.
Beckett was rich too, of course.
Some time is spent thinking about the last two weeks.
And a bit of a weep is had.
A very bittersweet one.
And then a train went past. And a dog howled at it.
I kid you not.
And the train went by forever, like they know it does now.
I feel better now.
Even just remembering is making it less painful.
The quietness.
Then she heard the hiss of a car passing quietly down the road in front of the house.
Sorry reader, I couldn’t resist that.
Goodnight. Safe home.
All of you.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Saturday, July 29, 2006
So many restaurants, so little time
Queenie is having terrible problems with her wifi at the moment, so posting may be delayed….
Effing internet. What effing use is it if you can’t get onto it.
Well, if you can do nothing else in Nova Scotia, you can eat well. Of course you can do lots of things here, but ohmygod you can eat well. Queenie has a taut swelled bump of a midriff after two weeks of the Queen Parents being here.
Last weekend, I brought them down the Valley. Down the Valley is the Annapolis Valley, which is the farming area of Nova Scotia. It was generally agreed that it was very like Ireland. Although it is mostly dyked reclaimed land so it is like Ireland if Ireland were Holland.
We stayed in a B&B in a little village called Canning, which has apple blossom everywhere, and a number of Baptist churches, and nothing else. The breakfasts were amazing. First of all, you got fresh juice, coffee and warm muffins served to your room at 7.30. Then you had an enormous breakfast at 8.30. Then we went in the car on a little jaunt somewhere. Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Beryl crashed onto the South Shore and across Nova Scotia that weekend. SO. IT. POURED. ALL. WEEKEND. Apart from one day, Saturday I think.
We did mostly tourist stuff – went to the Habitacion in Annapolis which is a reconstruction of the original French settlement of 1705. And the Acadian museum in Grand Pre which marks the Grand Derangement, the deportation of 10,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia by perfidious Albionists. And pottered around Wolfville, which is where I Wwoofed last summer and which is a nice university town a bit like a small version of Kilkenny. If Kilkenny had clapboard houses and was by the sea.
There was always a nice lunch in a European run bistro about two pm. Then back to the B&B for reading and afternoon tea, which usually involved some kind of very nice chocolate cake.
Then we picked a restaurant and headed off to eat more at 7.30, which is of course horrendously late in Nova Scotia. But still, there needed to be a bit of space in order to clear the stomach for a further filling.
Wolfville has many great restaurants, but the best three are The Tempest, Actons, and Between the Bushes, in that order I think. The Tempest is a chef-owner, very trendy European type bistro, all of whose servers are resting actors I think. Actons is a more high-brow, professional server type formal dining type place, with a focus on fish and steaks, and Between the Bushes is a lovely farmhouse restaurant in the middle of a blueberry farm with nice sunsets and all kinds of interesting fauna. Of course, Wolfville has the Blomidon Inn as well, which is supposed to be the best, but it’s a bit expensive for us.
Anyways, after that it was back to the B&B again for thankfully, rest not more food and a big long sleep until it was time to eat muffins again. Before that though Queenie had to reverse the car into the parking spot every night, which involved the Queen Father getting out and giving her complicated hand signals which she couldn’t see in the dark and then she would make a complete shite of the whole thing and get a lecture about parking. Which would go down like a lead banana of course.
Since we got back to Halifax we have been alternating eating in and eating out and sampling the delights of Haligonian cooking, which are multitudinal also. And as tonight was our last night together as a group of four, we went to Chives.
Chives of course starred in my blog nearly a year ago as the site of the wedding feast of Mr. and Mrs. Monkey. And very nice it was then and very nice it was tonight too. Although the table wasn’t decorated as prettily :->
So, just the one night left and the QPs will be winging their way back to Ireland. I wonder what impressions they will be bringing with them?
They met Himself and various politicians that Queenie works for and Hotspur the Goddess of Spin of course and some of Himself’s family, so that was all good. And Halifax seemed to grow on them once they figured out the buses and the waterfront and the grid system and that. Maybe not enough defined shopping areas for the Queen Mum to browse in.
And the Queen Dad and Queenie did the Harbour Hopper today, which is the Nova Scotian equivalent of the Viking Splash.
Today it was so hot it was almost too hot and our room is like an oven tonight so we will have to use the fan for the first time this year. August will be hot hot hot. Not as hot as BC, where temperatures of over 40 degrees are being recorded in Kelowna and Nanaimo and the forest fires are raging fiercely.
Effing internet. What effing use is it if you can’t get onto it.
Well, if you can do nothing else in Nova Scotia, you can eat well. Of course you can do lots of things here, but ohmygod you can eat well. Queenie has a taut swelled bump of a midriff after two weeks of the Queen Parents being here.
Last weekend, I brought them down the Valley. Down the Valley is the Annapolis Valley, which is the farming area of Nova Scotia. It was generally agreed that it was very like Ireland. Although it is mostly dyked reclaimed land so it is like Ireland if Ireland were Holland.
We stayed in a B&B in a little village called Canning, which has apple blossom everywhere, and a number of Baptist churches, and nothing else. The breakfasts were amazing. First of all, you got fresh juice, coffee and warm muffins served to your room at 7.30. Then you had an enormous breakfast at 8.30. Then we went in the car on a little jaunt somewhere. Unfortunately, Tropical Storm Beryl crashed onto the South Shore and across Nova Scotia that weekend. SO. IT. POURED. ALL. WEEKEND. Apart from one day, Saturday I think.
We did mostly tourist stuff – went to the Habitacion in Annapolis which is a reconstruction of the original French settlement of 1705. And the Acadian museum in Grand Pre which marks the Grand Derangement, the deportation of 10,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia by perfidious Albionists. And pottered around Wolfville, which is where I Wwoofed last summer and which is a nice university town a bit like a small version of Kilkenny. If Kilkenny had clapboard houses and was by the sea.
There was always a nice lunch in a European run bistro about two pm. Then back to the B&B for reading and afternoon tea, which usually involved some kind of very nice chocolate cake.
Then we picked a restaurant and headed off to eat more at 7.30, which is of course horrendously late in Nova Scotia. But still, there needed to be a bit of space in order to clear the stomach for a further filling.
Wolfville has many great restaurants, but the best three are The Tempest, Actons, and Between the Bushes, in that order I think. The Tempest is a chef-owner, very trendy European type bistro, all of whose servers are resting actors I think. Actons is a more high-brow, professional server type formal dining type place, with a focus on fish and steaks, and Between the Bushes is a lovely farmhouse restaurant in the middle of a blueberry farm with nice sunsets and all kinds of interesting fauna. Of course, Wolfville has the Blomidon Inn as well, which is supposed to be the best, but it’s a bit expensive for us.
Anyways, after that it was back to the B&B again for thankfully, rest not more food and a big long sleep until it was time to eat muffins again. Before that though Queenie had to reverse the car into the parking spot every night, which involved the Queen Father getting out and giving her complicated hand signals which she couldn’t see in the dark and then she would make a complete shite of the whole thing and get a lecture about parking. Which would go down like a lead banana of course.
Since we got back to Halifax we have been alternating eating in and eating out and sampling the delights of Haligonian cooking, which are multitudinal also. And as tonight was our last night together as a group of four, we went to Chives.
Chives of course starred in my blog nearly a year ago as the site of the wedding feast of Mr. and Mrs. Monkey. And very nice it was then and very nice it was tonight too. Although the table wasn’t decorated as prettily :->
So, just the one night left and the QPs will be winging their way back to Ireland. I wonder what impressions they will be bringing with them?
They met Himself and various politicians that Queenie works for and Hotspur the Goddess of Spin of course and some of Himself’s family, so that was all good. And Halifax seemed to grow on them once they figured out the buses and the waterfront and the grid system and that. Maybe not enough defined shopping areas for the Queen Mum to browse in.
And the Queen Dad and Queenie did the Harbour Hopper today, which is the Nova Scotian equivalent of the Viking Splash.
Today it was so hot it was almost too hot and our room is like an oven tonight so we will have to use the fan for the first time this year. August will be hot hot hot. Not as hot as BC, where temperatures of over 40 degrees are being recorded in Kelowna and Nanaimo and the forest fires are raging fiercely.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Domestic Bliss on Beaufort
Friday evening. I am sitting on the smallest deck in the world as usual. We have had a barbeque. Himself cooked steaks and baked sweet potatoes. I did the fresh corn, drizzled with oil and wrapped in tinfoil. The Queen Mother made a salad. The Queen Father was driven by Queenie to the Liquor Store and bought an eight pack of Keith’s (for the Queen Parents), an eight pack of Olands for Himself, and an eight pack of Schooner for me. He had also been to the nice wine shop in Bishop’s Landing and bought a couple of bottles of Knife and Fork, the great wine we found which comes in litre bottles with screw tops but which is very drinkable and a reasonable price.
Then we had mangoes and ice cream.
As you can see, everyone has found their role and is doing their bit to make it work. It’s all very domesticated. We had a nice meal and sat around talking about Belgium and Holland and the second World War and what the Canadian role was. And what they did in Bosnia. And Rwanda. We circled around Afghanistan a bit but didn’t go there tonight. It’s too depressing.
I find myself reading voraciously every time a Canadian is killed. Trying to remember their names. Trying to remember where they’re from and what their girlfriend or wife said at the memorial. A lot of it is to do with the fact that I can only remember one or two of the thousands of people who died in the Troubles. That has always bothered me.
Canada’s role in Afghanistan is troubling. For many Canadians too. You forget how much combat this country has seen. Most of it against the will of most ordinary Canadians.
However, it was too nice an evening to spoil it with war talk. We are all feeling very relaxed at the moment. For different reasons, I suppose. Himself and Queenie are thrilled because we’ve found somewhere to live. A really gorgeous two-bedroomed place with a kitchen that you could have a party in, a dining room and a living room, out on Herring Cove Road, which is a lovely part of the city. It has a really nice big garden, with a gate in the back fence that leads to a path through the woods, that ends at a sandy beach on a swimming lake. Steeped we are. We signed the lease today and take possession in mid-August.
I spent a lot of time this evening discussing the possibility of getting a kayak for the lake until Himself not unreasonably pointed out that we needed some furniture first.
Spoilsport.
I cannot believe that I am finally going to live in a wonderful, light-filled, large, two-bedroomed apartment in a house with just two other apartments, with parking and heating included, on the edge of a lake surrounded by a maple tree wood, for six hundred euros a month.
This is why I came to Canada.
You are all invited of course. The options are: come in the summer and swim in the lake, or come in the winter and skate on the lake, or come in the autumn and admire the trees. Or come in the spring, but I wouldn’t recommend that.
Queenie will be hosting skating parties. Imagine that! So long as she doesn’t have to skate.
We alternate eating in with going out with the Queen Parents and it is working well. The Queen Father is astounded at Queenie’s ability to cook. It just sort of happened this year once I had a bit of time and a nice kitchen. And we’ve been eating a lot of really wonderful in season Maritime food – squash and sweet potatoes and fresh corn and blueberries and freshly picked raspberries and lobster, and crab, and wonderful haddock fresh off the boat. So it is a pleasure to cook and to eat. And the kitchen is big enough for two women to work in without killing each other. And then it’s time to watch the CBC news and moan about how terrible it is compared to RTE (it’s not really – one of the things I love about the CBC is that they have the young funky presenters doing the main news, and the old arses are relegated to the second channel late news, in direct contrast to RTE).
I’ve been working three day weeks for the last little while, so I can spend some time with the folks. And Himself. He has a job now, hauling logs in Nova Scotia, but his hours are crazy and his schedule is not a five day week, so we can go eight or ten days without spending any quality time together, so I have been trying to make sure we have at least two days every ten where we get to converse enough that we can get down to the mundane. Which is of course extremely important for the smooth running of a relationship that has recently moved from being together to living together.
So far so good. Queenie has a bit of work to do on a couple of issues but is determined to try. So has Himself of course. But that’s up to him.
Work is finally calming down. That’s one of the reasons why I have not been blogging. Well, crazy work, followed by visitors, followed by domestic chores, followed by time with Himself, followed by sleep. Takes up pretty much all the time. Anyways, this is the first night for a while everyone has had enough of everyone else and is off doing their own thing.
The Queen Mother is cleaning up in my kitchen. She’s not been too bad actually, for a mother staying in her daughter’s house for the first time. The only hiatus was the evening I came home from work exhausted and she had gone to clean the green bin and realised there were maggots in it, which could turn into bluebottles, which therefore needed to be exterminated. She had soaked them in water and something or other, but still the hose needed to be found, and a scrubby thing, and then it needed to be washed out and rinsed and bleached and etc, and Queenie had to act like she knew/ cared about what she was doing when really she just wanted a gin and tonic and bed, but we got it done.
The Queen Father is reading The Colony of Unrequited Love and grumbling at the news. Himself is looking for cheap furniture in this week’s issue of Bargain Hunter. And Queenie is updating, because Luke is sick of checking in.
Consider yourself updated until tomorrow. There will be another post tomorrow.
Then we had mangoes and ice cream.
As you can see, everyone has found their role and is doing their bit to make it work. It’s all very domesticated. We had a nice meal and sat around talking about Belgium and Holland and the second World War and what the Canadian role was. And what they did in Bosnia. And Rwanda. We circled around Afghanistan a bit but didn’t go there tonight. It’s too depressing.
I find myself reading voraciously every time a Canadian is killed. Trying to remember their names. Trying to remember where they’re from and what their girlfriend or wife said at the memorial. A lot of it is to do with the fact that I can only remember one or two of the thousands of people who died in the Troubles. That has always bothered me.
Canada’s role in Afghanistan is troubling. For many Canadians too. You forget how much combat this country has seen. Most of it against the will of most ordinary Canadians.
However, it was too nice an evening to spoil it with war talk. We are all feeling very relaxed at the moment. For different reasons, I suppose. Himself and Queenie are thrilled because we’ve found somewhere to live. A really gorgeous two-bedroomed place with a kitchen that you could have a party in, a dining room and a living room, out on Herring Cove Road, which is a lovely part of the city. It has a really nice big garden, with a gate in the back fence that leads to a path through the woods, that ends at a sandy beach on a swimming lake. Steeped we are. We signed the lease today and take possession in mid-August.
I spent a lot of time this evening discussing the possibility of getting a kayak for the lake until Himself not unreasonably pointed out that we needed some furniture first.
Spoilsport.
I cannot believe that I am finally going to live in a wonderful, light-filled, large, two-bedroomed apartment in a house with just two other apartments, with parking and heating included, on the edge of a lake surrounded by a maple tree wood, for six hundred euros a month.
This is why I came to Canada.
You are all invited of course. The options are: come in the summer and swim in the lake, or come in the winter and skate on the lake, or come in the autumn and admire the trees. Or come in the spring, but I wouldn’t recommend that.
Queenie will be hosting skating parties. Imagine that! So long as she doesn’t have to skate.
We alternate eating in with going out with the Queen Parents and it is working well. The Queen Father is astounded at Queenie’s ability to cook. It just sort of happened this year once I had a bit of time and a nice kitchen. And we’ve been eating a lot of really wonderful in season Maritime food – squash and sweet potatoes and fresh corn and blueberries and freshly picked raspberries and lobster, and crab, and wonderful haddock fresh off the boat. So it is a pleasure to cook and to eat. And the kitchen is big enough for two women to work in without killing each other. And then it’s time to watch the CBC news and moan about how terrible it is compared to RTE (it’s not really – one of the things I love about the CBC is that they have the young funky presenters doing the main news, and the old arses are relegated to the second channel late news, in direct contrast to RTE).
I’ve been working three day weeks for the last little while, so I can spend some time with the folks. And Himself. He has a job now, hauling logs in Nova Scotia, but his hours are crazy and his schedule is not a five day week, so we can go eight or ten days without spending any quality time together, so I have been trying to make sure we have at least two days every ten where we get to converse enough that we can get down to the mundane. Which is of course extremely important for the smooth running of a relationship that has recently moved from being together to living together.
So far so good. Queenie has a bit of work to do on a couple of issues but is determined to try. So has Himself of course. But that’s up to him.
Work is finally calming down. That’s one of the reasons why I have not been blogging. Well, crazy work, followed by visitors, followed by domestic chores, followed by time with Himself, followed by sleep. Takes up pretty much all the time. Anyways, this is the first night for a while everyone has had enough of everyone else and is off doing their own thing.
The Queen Mother is cleaning up in my kitchen. She’s not been too bad actually, for a mother staying in her daughter’s house for the first time. The only hiatus was the evening I came home from work exhausted and she had gone to clean the green bin and realised there were maggots in it, which could turn into bluebottles, which therefore needed to be exterminated. She had soaked them in water and something or other, but still the hose needed to be found, and a scrubby thing, and then it needed to be washed out and rinsed and bleached and etc, and Queenie had to act like she knew/ cared about what she was doing when really she just wanted a gin and tonic and bed, but we got it done.
The Queen Father is reading The Colony of Unrequited Love and grumbling at the news. Himself is looking for cheap furniture in this week’s issue of Bargain Hunter. And Queenie is updating, because Luke is sick of checking in.
Consider yourself updated until tomorrow. There will be another post tomorrow.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Whereupon the narrator gets comfortable...
Rambling alert. It's late and I'm *tired*.
I think it’s a mafia society.
Canada I mean.
Real old style garotte from behind mafia culture.
I often wonder where their sense of this cultural history comes from.
Somewhere really vicious.
They talk very openly about things that nobody mentions in Ireland. Or London. Or Paris.
Wife-beating. And murder. And drug dealing.
And they fight. The young men do. They attack each other in the streets. Except I don’t know if that’s true, because I don’t know anyone who was attacked. In some sense there's nothing unusual about it, it goes on everywhere, but they don't do anything about it. No zero tolerance here. The cops just ignore it.
It’s amazing how we only start giving a shit when it affects us.
And there's a sense of 'good luck to you, dude' for those guys who shoot up half a town and two Mounties and then disappear into the woods for months.
Apart from the Mounties. Who get incredibly pissed off and ALWAYS get their man in the end.
Half-starved, frost-bitten, lost in the snow.
Corporals January, February and March.
But then they all have a nervous breakdown when someone in the armed forces gets killed.
I think it's about being happy that the people involved chose their own path.
And soldiers don't, do they?
But yeah, they happily engage with and talk about feuds all the time.
And they're very fond of their local headbangers.
In the Irish sense of the phrase.
And then, they've such an incredible sense of order in society they bring in a law that supports gay marriage. And common law relationships exist after one year. As opposed to NEVER in Ireland.
I don't know where the latent violence in Canada comes from. Nor the tribalism.
It doesn’t come from anywhere in particular, I think people brought it from where ever they came from.
I think that might be the problem here.
They don’t encourage the finding out of tribal cultural history easily here, because they don’t want to allow tribalism. Because Canada would disintegrate into a series of forest and urban fiefdoms.
Or revert to, I should say.
But it exists anyway.
That sense of affinity with others of your kind.
And it’s getting stronger.
Why are we all starting to mass into tribes again?
I was thinking the other day, the movement of people around the planet must be wrecking the dwarves’ heads.
"There's something up boys... the weather's changing up top. All that thunder and lightening," they must say to themselves. The gods stomping around.
Or maybe we sound like a flock of birds.
Swirling around their mountains like nasty seagulls do down on the waterfront when you’ve got an ice-cream.
What do I sound like to a sparrow?
Or a blade of grass?
I explain further on why I am talking about these profundities.
Dear Reader,
I have always wanted to start writing a book with those words.
I love those kinds of books.
Dear Reader means:
Sit down, girl.
Why?
I’m going to tell you a story.
Really?
Oh yes.
Then Dear Reader would perk right up and say:
Fantastic, let me get comfortable.
Time would pass.
Pasta is cooked.
Eventually Reader would resurface with a bag of stuff
…. Have I got everything?
Smokes.
Chocolate.
Bottle of wine.
Vibrator. Just in case.
And the dvd.
In case I need to see his face (insert actor of choice).
I’d sell fifty million copies if I could continue in the same chatty narrator vein through a rip-roaring twentyfirst century version of the nineteenth century chick lit sprawl.
I would.
Anyways, back to the sparrow…
I think it’s a mafia society.
Canada I mean.
Real old style garotte from behind mafia culture.
I often wonder where their sense of this cultural history comes from.
Somewhere really vicious.
They talk very openly about things that nobody mentions in Ireland. Or London. Or Paris.
Wife-beating. And murder. And drug dealing.
And they fight. The young men do. They attack each other in the streets. Except I don’t know if that’s true, because I don’t know anyone who was attacked. In some sense there's nothing unusual about it, it goes on everywhere, but they don't do anything about it. No zero tolerance here. The cops just ignore it.
It’s amazing how we only start giving a shit when it affects us.
And there's a sense of 'good luck to you, dude' for those guys who shoot up half a town and two Mounties and then disappear into the woods for months.
Apart from the Mounties. Who get incredibly pissed off and ALWAYS get their man in the end.
Half-starved, frost-bitten, lost in the snow.
Corporals January, February and March.
But then they all have a nervous breakdown when someone in the armed forces gets killed.
I think it's about being happy that the people involved chose their own path.
And soldiers don't, do they?
But yeah, they happily engage with and talk about feuds all the time.
And they're very fond of their local headbangers.
In the Irish sense of the phrase.
And then, they've such an incredible sense of order in society they bring in a law that supports gay marriage. And common law relationships exist after one year. As opposed to NEVER in Ireland.
I don't know where the latent violence in Canada comes from. Nor the tribalism.
It doesn’t come from anywhere in particular, I think people brought it from where ever they came from.
I think that might be the problem here.
They don’t encourage the finding out of tribal cultural history easily here, because they don’t want to allow tribalism. Because Canada would disintegrate into a series of forest and urban fiefdoms.
Or revert to, I should say.
But it exists anyway.
That sense of affinity with others of your kind.
And it’s getting stronger.
Why are we all starting to mass into tribes again?
I was thinking the other day, the movement of people around the planet must be wrecking the dwarves’ heads.
"There's something up boys... the weather's changing up top. All that thunder and lightening," they must say to themselves. The gods stomping around.
Or maybe we sound like a flock of birds.
Swirling around their mountains like nasty seagulls do down on the waterfront when you’ve got an ice-cream.
What do I sound like to a sparrow?
Or a blade of grass?
I explain further on why I am talking about these profundities.
Dear Reader,
I have always wanted to start writing a book with those words.
I love those kinds of books.
Dear Reader means:
Sit down, girl.
Why?
I’m going to tell you a story.
Really?
Oh yes.
Then Dear Reader would perk right up and say:
Fantastic, let me get comfortable.
Time would pass.
Pasta is cooked.
Eventually Reader would resurface with a bag of stuff
…. Have I got everything?
Smokes.
Chocolate.
Bottle of wine.
Vibrator. Just in case.
And the dvd.
In case I need to see his face (insert actor of choice).
I’d sell fifty million copies if I could continue in the same chatty narrator vein through a rip-roaring twentyfirst century version of the nineteenth century chick lit sprawl.
I would.
Anyways, back to the sparrow…
Delicately poised over two rushes
So the rush is over. The work rush.
The holiday rush is about to start.
I am delicately balanced between the self-imposed stress of the two.
As I said to a colleague today, I have deep reserves of patience available if I need some, I just don’t think many people are worth dipping into them for.
He said he felt the same about life.
It was one of those afternoons.
We passed the budget and headed over to the Triangle for lunch which was very relaxed and nice and I did my thing that I do of not mentioning politics AT ALL, which seems to help the people from work when they’re very stressed, although sometimes I think it makes me look like a bimbo (what a horrible word) and I just burbled on at length about various things until I hit on the one they wanted to talk about and then sat back and listened to the stories.
Which was great because I learn so much about Canada when they tell those stories.
Also, even though they are about things I am still learning about, they are really comforting because they remind me of the swirl of the pub after work at home, which is the thing I think I miss the most about home.
The idea that it may be five o’clock, or three o’clock, or two o’clock in the morning and we might all have had a shitty week, and have partners at home who are expecting us, or chores to do, or someone we don’t like particularly to meet, or a meeting to go to. And I might have spent the week moaning about my life and bitching about you and getting paranoid about your motives and consequently trying to shaft you out of a job, but HEY…..
… I’m not done with you just yet, so let’s go for a pint and remember why we do this job.
At one point in the afternoon we found ourselves discussing McCarthy’s Bar, which two of them had read.
And then one of them said he was dead. Pete McCarthy.
I hadn’t known that.
I love afternoons like that.
They don’t come along very often.
And then someone told a story about the storm the other night, about how the dog was scared and couldn’t sleep. So they both had to go downstairs and sleep with the dog…
I would have put the effing thing out in the yard.
Canadians and their pets....
After enough time had passed and everyone was either gone or gone, Himself and I wandered out and walked down to a spot on the waterfront where the birds gather and watched them for a while.
Until he said, see that sparrow?
There were about fifty.
Which one, I said.
The one over by the wall.
I looked.
There was one. It was hopping anxiously over and back in front of a little clump of grass that was clinging to life in a narrow crack in the pavement.
Canada is full of cracked pavements.
Well, Nova Scotia is.
I watched the sparrow. I had a feeling this was going to be one of Himself's comments on my world. His humour is genius.
And one of my colleagues had spent forty minutes the night before trying to convince him that plants could talk.
Swampy had bailed on him of course.
I think that’s why he remembered it.
He’ll have to get used to Swampy’s disappearances.
That’s just what he does.
Anyways, I watched the sparrow for a while.
But I couldn't fathom what he had spotted.
What? I said.
That sparrow is trying to talk to that blade of grass.
Which blade?
The young one, in the middle.
I watched again.
Sure enough, the sparrow was zoning in on that blade for some reason.
Rubbing its brown breast against it.
It’s probably looking for food.
No, look, they’re all eating out of the stalk on the other side.
So they were. Humming around it like jewel birds.
Everyone, even sparrows, is a humming bird inside. But you gotta do the best with what you got in this world.
And they were on the waterfront.
In Halifax Nova Scotia.
So it was common or garden grass in a crack in the pavement.
Anyways, I watched some more.
And then I started to snigger.
Because he had noticed it straight away for what it was.
A stupid sparrow. Too dumb to notice all the eating going on just beside him.
It gets you thinking all the same.
All this hippy dippy stuff they come out with.
The holiday rush is about to start.
I am delicately balanced between the self-imposed stress of the two.
As I said to a colleague today, I have deep reserves of patience available if I need some, I just don’t think many people are worth dipping into them for.
He said he felt the same about life.
It was one of those afternoons.
We passed the budget and headed over to the Triangle for lunch which was very relaxed and nice and I did my thing that I do of not mentioning politics AT ALL, which seems to help the people from work when they’re very stressed, although sometimes I think it makes me look like a bimbo (what a horrible word) and I just burbled on at length about various things until I hit on the one they wanted to talk about and then sat back and listened to the stories.
Which was great because I learn so much about Canada when they tell those stories.
Also, even though they are about things I am still learning about, they are really comforting because they remind me of the swirl of the pub after work at home, which is the thing I think I miss the most about home.
The idea that it may be five o’clock, or three o’clock, or two o’clock in the morning and we might all have had a shitty week, and have partners at home who are expecting us, or chores to do, or someone we don’t like particularly to meet, or a meeting to go to. And I might have spent the week moaning about my life and bitching about you and getting paranoid about your motives and consequently trying to shaft you out of a job, but HEY…..
… I’m not done with you just yet, so let’s go for a pint and remember why we do this job.
At one point in the afternoon we found ourselves discussing McCarthy’s Bar, which two of them had read.
And then one of them said he was dead. Pete McCarthy.
I hadn’t known that.
I love afternoons like that.
They don’t come along very often.
And then someone told a story about the storm the other night, about how the dog was scared and couldn’t sleep. So they both had to go downstairs and sleep with the dog…
I would have put the effing thing out in the yard.
Canadians and their pets....
After enough time had passed and everyone was either gone or gone, Himself and I wandered out and walked down to a spot on the waterfront where the birds gather and watched them for a while.
Until he said, see that sparrow?
There were about fifty.
Which one, I said.
The one over by the wall.
I looked.
There was one. It was hopping anxiously over and back in front of a little clump of grass that was clinging to life in a narrow crack in the pavement.
Canada is full of cracked pavements.
Well, Nova Scotia is.
I watched the sparrow. I had a feeling this was going to be one of Himself's comments on my world. His humour is genius.
And one of my colleagues had spent forty minutes the night before trying to convince him that plants could talk.
Swampy had bailed on him of course.
I think that’s why he remembered it.
He’ll have to get used to Swampy’s disappearances.
That’s just what he does.
Anyways, I watched the sparrow for a while.
But I couldn't fathom what he had spotted.
What? I said.
That sparrow is trying to talk to that blade of grass.
Which blade?
The young one, in the middle.
I watched again.
Sure enough, the sparrow was zoning in on that blade for some reason.
Rubbing its brown breast against it.
It’s probably looking for food.
No, look, they’re all eating out of the stalk on the other side.
So they were. Humming around it like jewel birds.
Everyone, even sparrows, is a humming bird inside. But you gotta do the best with what you got in this world.
And they were on the waterfront.
In Halifax Nova Scotia.
So it was common or garden grass in a crack in the pavement.
Anyways, I watched some more.
And then I started to snigger.
Because he had noticed it straight away for what it was.
A stupid sparrow. Too dumb to notice all the eating going on just beside him.
It gets you thinking all the same.
All this hippy dippy stuff they come out with.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
When is the wimmin of Ireland going to learn?????
Jesus, when is work going to slow down!
Queenie is at a point far beyond her normal endurance levels. And of course because it's hot and everyone's tired, and stressed, and working far too long hours on the budget, the atmosphere is just peachy at the moment.
That's Queenie's charitable assessment of the situation.
Effing politics. Sometimes I hate it. Most times I don't hate it.
This week I do, but.
At least I'm just tired. I'll be alright when I've had a bit of a rest and the visitations to take my mind off things. (Visitations are starting on Sunday with the Queen Mother and Father, then Polly's coming in August, and Jersey Girl and her Boy, so there will be eating in July and camping in August - HOORAY!!).
Obviously we'll be eating in August too, but it won't be as raison de jour as the eating out with the Queen Parents when on holidays is. I do like a parents who like a good meal out.
Yeah, so at least I'm just tired.
I'm not STUUUPIID.
Like some women.
Some Irish women.
Like the 'big eejit' (according to Derval) who got drunk at Dubln Zoo and stuck her arm into the tiger's cage. And had it mauled. Big eejit is right, Derv. I loved the quote from the zoo director, who said she was lucky the tiger let go of something as new and interesting as an arm.
Sensible tiger.
Irish women...
We met a Waterford man in the 'Shoe last Friday night who told Himself ALL about Irish wimmin. Apparently we're a shower of selfish sleeveens.
I'm beginning to think he's right.
What's all this about some woman with some frozen embryos fertilised by her former husband, who is not only looking to have them implanted so she can have a child, but is planning on charging him child support for it?
What kind of a way is that to bring a child into the world?
How loved will it feel, reading back on the Irish Times coverage of the court case currently in progress?
Stupid woman.
I know having babies is difficult for some people and I have all the sympathy and encouragement in the world for people who are nice and would be great parents who decide to take one of the alternative routes to parenthood. If that's what's needed.
But to stick your ex-husband for the bill?
That's a bit vindictive, isn't it.
Jersey Girl and I were talking about it on the phone tonight and she said in America, the ex-husband would counter-sue saying he wanted them embedded in his new wife.
Man, Himself and I lie in bed at night thanking the stars we are not that couple.
Then there was the woman in the Observer a couple of weeks ago who managed to get paid for what was supposed to be an article about a life choice, but what was essentially a four page advertisement for the perfect father. To impregnate her in some way. And then possibly to contribute to the upbringing of said issue. But not to have any meaningful input into the raising of said issue.
I'm sure she's coming down with offers.
I don't know... you work hard and you pay your way and you insist on equality and you fight and fight and fight to convince men that you're worth taking seriously, and then three bints like that come along and just RUIN it for the rest of us.
Himself's truck broke down tonight and he's not home yet although it's almost eleven, so I should give him a call and see if he wants hang sangwidges made or anything.
Domesticity.....
Doncha just love it.
Queenie is at a point far beyond her normal endurance levels. And of course because it's hot and everyone's tired, and stressed, and working far too long hours on the budget, the atmosphere is just peachy at the moment.
That's Queenie's charitable assessment of the situation.
Effing politics. Sometimes I hate it. Most times I don't hate it.
This week I do, but.
At least I'm just tired. I'll be alright when I've had a bit of a rest and the visitations to take my mind off things. (Visitations are starting on Sunday with the Queen Mother and Father, then Polly's coming in August, and Jersey Girl and her Boy, so there will be eating in July and camping in August - HOORAY!!).
Obviously we'll be eating in August too, but it won't be as raison de jour as the eating out with the Queen Parents when on holidays is. I do like a parents who like a good meal out.
Yeah, so at least I'm just tired.
I'm not STUUUPIID.
Like some women.
Some Irish women.
Like the 'big eejit' (according to Derval) who got drunk at Dubln Zoo and stuck her arm into the tiger's cage. And had it mauled. Big eejit is right, Derv. I loved the quote from the zoo director, who said she was lucky the tiger let go of something as new and interesting as an arm.
Sensible tiger.
Irish women...
We met a Waterford man in the 'Shoe last Friday night who told Himself ALL about Irish wimmin. Apparently we're a shower of selfish sleeveens.
I'm beginning to think he's right.
What's all this about some woman with some frozen embryos fertilised by her former husband, who is not only looking to have them implanted so she can have a child, but is planning on charging him child support for it?
What kind of a way is that to bring a child into the world?
How loved will it feel, reading back on the Irish Times coverage of the court case currently in progress?
Stupid woman.
I know having babies is difficult for some people and I have all the sympathy and encouragement in the world for people who are nice and would be great parents who decide to take one of the alternative routes to parenthood. If that's what's needed.
But to stick your ex-husband for the bill?
That's a bit vindictive, isn't it.
Jersey Girl and I were talking about it on the phone tonight and she said in America, the ex-husband would counter-sue saying he wanted them embedded in his new wife.
Man, Himself and I lie in bed at night thanking the stars we are not that couple.
Then there was the woman in the Observer a couple of weeks ago who managed to get paid for what was supposed to be an article about a life choice, but what was essentially a four page advertisement for the perfect father. To impregnate her in some way. And then possibly to contribute to the upbringing of said issue. But not to have any meaningful input into the raising of said issue.
I'm sure she's coming down with offers.
I don't know... you work hard and you pay your way and you insist on equality and you fight and fight and fight to convince men that you're worth taking seriously, and then three bints like that come along and just RUIN it for the rest of us.
Himself's truck broke down tonight and he's not home yet although it's almost eleven, so I should give him a call and see if he wants hang sangwidges made or anything.
Domesticity.....
Doncha just love it.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
In search of Glooscap (and bears)
OhmyGod! What a long gap between blog entries.
Queenie hadn’t realised how long, so busy she was being the domestic diva.
June 18th…. A beautiful day….
It’s been raining pretty much since, apart from a couple of nice days.
So what’s been happening?
Well, Himself arrived home a few days after that Saturday. And got Himself a job within a couple of weeks, so now we’re setting out on that greatest of all journeys in life… shacking up together properly.
It’s going well so far. Very polite. Very nice.
Very nice, actually…(
And we’re going house-hunting soon, as the lease is up on this house soon and we’d like to get a place of our own.
Everyone say ‘aaahhhh’.
What else?
Work has been crazy busy. The Government herded us all back into the House for three weeks of budgets and Question Time and all kinds of complicated business when we just want to take a week off and lie in the sun.
If there was any sun to lie in.
Lotsa fog here at the moment. The Atlantic is still too cold and the air is too warm and Halifax is too near the confluence of both so we have misty mornings every day. Dreamy damp fronds drifting amongst the high rise buildings of downtown Halifax as people grumble their way to work.
I’m not too pushed while I’m in work, particularly since the warmth outside increases the blast of cold air inside my building. But I like my weekends to be a bit nice.
First weekend Himself was back we headed down to the island to catch up with folks. We had two barbeques over the course of the weekend, one at a reasonable 3pm on Sunday afternoon, and the other at a far more unreasonable 11pm on the previous Saturday due to the inability of the host to put down his beer until I turned up and dragged his drinking buddy away from him.
Men!! Tsk!!
And me after slaving over a hot Frenchie’s all day.
Frenchie’s is the chain store, with branches spread throughout Nova Scotia that sells remaindered high street and designer gear from the states. You go into a large warehouse, which is full of huge bins marked ‘Women’s pants’ or ‘Men’s shirts’ or ‘Evening Wear’ and you rummage until you faint through last year’s Gap, Ralph Lauren, Liz Clairborne, and other nice brands.
It’s two bucks for a top, three bucks for jeans, skirts and dresses, and two - three bucks for bags, belts, shoes, etc.
This is why Nova Scotians look at you like you’re insane if you buy clothes in a boutique. Particularly clothes marked ‘new arrivals’.
This is also why Nova Scotian fashion is about two years behind the rest of the modern world.
But so long as you don’t leave the province it’s okay.
So I got Himself an entire new wardrobe for less than sixty bucks.
For which he was suitably grateful when he sobered up.
Next weekend was Canada Day when Canadians go camping so being good little Canadians we went CAMPING!! With our new exciting tent and stove and toasting rack and other exciting camping stuff that I bought from Angel before she went out West.
Camping in the Bear Woods. Which are really called the Cobequid Mountains. I was very brave. But there wasn’t a bear in sight.
They are really beautiful, even though they are just big hills and not mountains at all. We did the Glooscap Trail. Glooscap is the Mik Ma’q god and he lived at the top of the Minas Basin, which is at the head of the Bay of Fundy. The Mik Ma’q believed that the fermenting waters of the Bay’s high tides and the tidal bore that runs up the Shubenacadie river were evidence of his presence in the area.
The landscape on one side of the Basin is very Irish, rolling green hills covered in a wonderful spread of wildflowers, hedgegrows and willow trees, small rivers and winding roads. Lots of cattle and horses in the fields; the only difference being that the farmhouses are all woodframed and the barns are all big red Dutch gabled wood barns.
It was the closest thing to Hobbiton I’ve ever seen.
Then we crossed through Truro, which is a big, bustling market town at the crossroads of Nova Scotia and headed west into the Cobequid side of the basin, where the landscape is more Canadian. The Cobequid Mountains are covered in Nova Scotian mixed forest, and roll gently down to wide red sand beaches that are a distinction of the Bay of Fundy.
The sky was blue blue blue, and together with the red sand and the green hills, it made for a most typical Nova Scotian landscape.
The wind was too southward (pronounced suthurd) to camp on the beach, according to the Old Man of the Sea, so we found a gentle little curve of riverbank with a nice copse of trees to camp in and a wide pebble beach to build a fire on, and set up for the weekend. We had such a lovely time hanging out and cooking steaks, making coffee and sitting by the fire drinking beer and looking at the stars and then the bloody RAIN came and ruined it so we had to go home.
But I really enjoyed our first camping trip in the Cobequid Mountains and shall definitely return.
This week it was back to work work work although it is only a four day week and Saturday is Queenie’s BIRTHDAY.
Queenie hadn’t realised how long, so busy she was being the domestic diva.
June 18th…. A beautiful day….
It’s been raining pretty much since, apart from a couple of nice days.
So what’s been happening?
Well, Himself arrived home a few days after that Saturday. And got Himself a job within a couple of weeks, so now we’re setting out on that greatest of all journeys in life… shacking up together properly.
It’s going well so far. Very polite. Very nice.
Very nice, actually…(
And we’re going house-hunting soon, as the lease is up on this house soon and we’d like to get a place of our own.
Everyone say ‘aaahhhh’.
What else?
Work has been crazy busy. The Government herded us all back into the House for three weeks of budgets and Question Time and all kinds of complicated business when we just want to take a week off and lie in the sun.
If there was any sun to lie in.
Lotsa fog here at the moment. The Atlantic is still too cold and the air is too warm and Halifax is too near the confluence of both so we have misty mornings every day. Dreamy damp fronds drifting amongst the high rise buildings of downtown Halifax as people grumble their way to work.
I’m not too pushed while I’m in work, particularly since the warmth outside increases the blast of cold air inside my building. But I like my weekends to be a bit nice.
First weekend Himself was back we headed down to the island to catch up with folks. We had two barbeques over the course of the weekend, one at a reasonable 3pm on Sunday afternoon, and the other at a far more unreasonable 11pm on the previous Saturday due to the inability of the host to put down his beer until I turned up and dragged his drinking buddy away from him.
Men!! Tsk!!
And me after slaving over a hot Frenchie’s all day.
Frenchie’s is the chain store, with branches spread throughout Nova Scotia that sells remaindered high street and designer gear from the states. You go into a large warehouse, which is full of huge bins marked ‘Women’s pants’ or ‘Men’s shirts’ or ‘Evening Wear’ and you rummage until you faint through last year’s Gap, Ralph Lauren, Liz Clairborne, and other nice brands.
It’s two bucks for a top, three bucks for jeans, skirts and dresses, and two - three bucks for bags, belts, shoes, etc.
This is why Nova Scotians look at you like you’re insane if you buy clothes in a boutique. Particularly clothes marked ‘new arrivals’.
This is also why Nova Scotian fashion is about two years behind the rest of the modern world.
But so long as you don’t leave the province it’s okay.
So I got Himself an entire new wardrobe for less than sixty bucks.
For which he was suitably grateful when he sobered up.
Next weekend was Canada Day when Canadians go camping so being good little Canadians we went CAMPING!! With our new exciting tent and stove and toasting rack and other exciting camping stuff that I bought from Angel before she went out West.
Camping in the Bear Woods. Which are really called the Cobequid Mountains. I was very brave. But there wasn’t a bear in sight.
They are really beautiful, even though they are just big hills and not mountains at all. We did the Glooscap Trail. Glooscap is the Mik Ma’q god and he lived at the top of the Minas Basin, which is at the head of the Bay of Fundy. The Mik Ma’q believed that the fermenting waters of the Bay’s high tides and the tidal bore that runs up the Shubenacadie river were evidence of his presence in the area.
The landscape on one side of the Basin is very Irish, rolling green hills covered in a wonderful spread of wildflowers, hedgegrows and willow trees, small rivers and winding roads. Lots of cattle and horses in the fields; the only difference being that the farmhouses are all woodframed and the barns are all big red Dutch gabled wood barns.
It was the closest thing to Hobbiton I’ve ever seen.
Then we crossed through Truro, which is a big, bustling market town at the crossroads of Nova Scotia and headed west into the Cobequid side of the basin, where the landscape is more Canadian. The Cobequid Mountains are covered in Nova Scotian mixed forest, and roll gently down to wide red sand beaches that are a distinction of the Bay of Fundy.
The sky was blue blue blue, and together with the red sand and the green hills, it made for a most typical Nova Scotian landscape.
The wind was too southward (pronounced suthurd) to camp on the beach, according to the Old Man of the Sea, so we found a gentle little curve of riverbank with a nice copse of trees to camp in and a wide pebble beach to build a fire on, and set up for the weekend. We had such a lovely time hanging out and cooking steaks, making coffee and sitting by the fire drinking beer and looking at the stars and then the bloody RAIN came and ruined it so we had to go home.
But I really enjoyed our first camping trip in the Cobequid Mountains and shall definitely return.
This week it was back to work work work although it is only a four day week and Saturday is Queenie’s BIRTHDAY.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Still managing the comedown
So yesterday was a beautiful day.
In many ways…
I didn’t have to go to work.
Man, that was beautiful.
I hadn’t had a day off since Easter.
And the weather was gorgeous. So I got out the sun lounger, and my suntan lotion, and my towel, and my new book, The Navigator of New York, by Wayne Johnston, who is my current ‘isn’t he great? How did I not know about him before’ writer.
There is some great writing coming out of Newfoundland. It must be the long winters. Or maybe it’s the Irish influence – there’s great writing in Cape Breton too.
I just finished his Colony of Unrequited Love, which is a fictionalised biography of Joe Smallwood, the man who brought Newfoundland into Confederation and then nearly bankrupted it. As a young man, Smallwood walked around Newfoundland several times organising the fishermen and the railway workers, before eschewing socialism for a career in Liberal politics.
I highly recommend it as both a great novel – the love story between Joe Smallwood and his political nemesis, a journalist called Fielding is very well told – and an interesting account of how England shafted Newfoundland for three hundred years and then passed it on to the nice Canadians when they were done with it.
Although the Germans etc have been very good to us, I can’t help thinking sometimes that confederation with Canada might have been the best thing for Ireland, if we had been able to paddle the island across.
There’s a wonderful account of Smallwood and some other Liberals going to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of confederation, their gradual realisation that the Canadian negotiators were so nice that they would agree to whatever demands the Newfies made, and their complete inability to take advantage of that, due to their ongoing complete inability to see the woods for the Liberal trees.
Story. Of. Effing. Atlantic. Canada.
The Navigator of New York is set in St. John’s and New York and is the story of the abandoned son of an Artic explorer who tries to overcome the pain of his childhood by making it to the North Pole. As with the other book, Johnston peoples Navigator with real characters such as Robert Peary et al. And makes the explorer circle sound like the pack of egotistical maniacs I always imagined them to be.
Like today’s mountaineers.
I know this is a bit late, but I was really struck by the death of that climber on Everest recently. There was a big debate about it in Canada. Of course, two days later, some Canadian climbers saved a man in similar (but not as bad) circumstances. So it was all about how Canadians are the nicest people in the world for a bit. (They can be a bit smug sometimes, but it’s okay because they are tremendously nice people).
But then an Albertan (Albertans are not as nice as other Canadians is an unspoken national instinct here, usually unspoken because Canucks are too polite, currently unspoken because the Albertans are in charge) female climber, who had to leave a partner behind on Everest a number of years ago, got into the fray saying abandonment was the correct approach as you have to keep moving. Which of course, coming from a woman, was particularly difficult for people to take, and so on it went.
What the effing hell are they all doing up there in the first place, is what I want to know?
Is there to be no mystery in the world anymore?
What is it about men (and some women now too) that they have to dominate everything, or take it apart to figure out how it works, or have races over getting to some point on the horizon? Why can’t they just sit back and enjoy it for what it is?
That’s what I spent yesterday doing.
Sitting back enjoying it.
Of course, I’m still coming down from my experience so a lot of the day was spent wondering where all the people I spent all my time with were, and what they were doing. Sort of like the day after Glastonbury, the same type of exhausted emptiness, but with the glow of the experience keeping you upright.
Then Paul cooked me supper. Again.
I would not have made it through the last six weeks without my roomies.
Seriously.
And we ate and talked about religion, which is what we talk about because he’s a pastor who is on a very arduous journey at the moment, and I’ll talk about anything, so long as I can do it at length in a very opinionated manner.
Which religion is good for.
And also, because I have been forced to re-examine my attitudes to faith in the last few weeks.
The woman who administered the office in Glace Bay was a Baptist.
We’d have these endless arguments about original sin. She was convinced of it. I don’t have any time for it, as I believe it is just a two thousand year old male antidote to their ancient fear and jealousy of women’s ability to take part in the creation myth. Which we have never gotten round to reframing, despite the fact that since then, men have figured out how we do it, and taken over the business of birth, and even taken on the mantle of co-parenting.
Yes, I’m still thinking about framing.
Did you know that there are no midwives in Nova Scotia? Well, there are, but they are not allowed to practice here the way they are in Ireland. Isn’t that just insane?
Anyways, at the same time as disagreeing with her absolutely, I realised that it was Ruth’s faith that brought her into the office every day. And her contribution was tremendous.
And she was a lot more sure of her role in life than I am.
But maybe that’s because she was an older woman.
Paul and I talked about the Eucharist last night. We were eating flat bread with Nova Scotia’s famous German sausage (unbelieveably good) and salad, and I said it was strange that this is probably somewhat similar to what Jesus had at the Last Supper, and yet if we want to be Christians we have to sit in a cold building being lectured at before eating a stale wafer, in a totally stylised us and them event, instead of all sitting round in somebody’s house, eating pitta bread and olives with a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
I’d do that anytime.
Paul just smiles to himself when I do this, and then goes off to the computer room to type furiously.
I have a strong suspicion that I am contributing to his sermons in some small way.
I saw a great poster in Just Us! a few months back. It said: “When I feed the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why they are poor they call me a communist.”
That’s what annoys me about religion, and particularly the Nova Scotia versions of it – Unitarian, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic - which is very focused on the church being a tool for good in the community (as opposed to being an opportunity to socialise). Doing good works is a fine human endeavour and we should all do it. But questioning the underlying cause of human suffering is more important. Otherwise we are just treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Listen Up, United Way!
That's what I like about organisations like St. Vincent de Paul in Ireland. They got stuck into the politics of poverty. And reframed the debate in the nineties.
And Oxfam. Oxfam is one of the best organisations in the world for that.
My friend accentmonkey has just left Oxfam Ireland after making a tremendous contribution to the organisation. They hired her to run a second-hand bookshop, she figured that out in ten seconds, and then proceeded to position them as a funky, politically astute, trendy cause in the national media, building strong relationships with journalists and donors and other key groups. Which is what Oxfam in other countries was doing, but they hadn't figured it out properly in Ireland.
As well as raising their profile in the media, she developed a successful business in the shop and also had to face the challenge of going to work in a charity shop with a sofa near Junkie-ville, with all the stress that entails.
You say you're tired, girl. And you sound tired. Quite rightly. Remember, there is no more arduous job in the world than working your butt off for people who don't have the money to give you stock options.
Half the people in the world have never used a telephone. And you overcame your hatred of said object to make life better for them.
You need to refocus your energies on yourself and Mr. Monkey. If you never do this type of work again it's not a problem, because you've done more than most people. But knowing you as I do, I imagine it won't be long before you are writing letters of outrage about some other cause you've come across in your full, meaningful life. And then sorting it out without getting up anyone's nose, or asking for any kudos, or expecting any of the rest of us to get off our asses and get involved.
Before waking up again one morning to think bah!, why do I do this?
I love when you do that, because your periods of outrage at the world's seeming inability to let you fix it all by yourself follow the same modus operandi - overwhelming irritation at the incompetence of others, followed by a swift stroke of genius that ensures you glide majestically past the effing nincompoops who are blocking the solution - that you use in your many successful efforts to fix the world.
All that 'bah' is is mental exhaustion, I think.
And you probably won't get too much thanks for what you did for Oxfam, because it's an NGO, and you are a woman who doesn't see the point in wasting energy on promoting yourself when you can be promoting your cause.
Like so many others, who climb the Everest of poverty purely to clean up the discarded oxygen tanks and care for the Sherpas, while the mountaineers of charity sit around and brag about the glorious torture of their tough ascent and just GET IN THE BLOODY WAY.
You should be very very proud of what you achieved for Oxfam.
I know I am very very proud of you.
Big kiss from Nova Scotia.
In many ways…
I didn’t have to go to work.
Man, that was beautiful.
I hadn’t had a day off since Easter.
And the weather was gorgeous. So I got out the sun lounger, and my suntan lotion, and my towel, and my new book, The Navigator of New York, by Wayne Johnston, who is my current ‘isn’t he great? How did I not know about him before’ writer.
There is some great writing coming out of Newfoundland. It must be the long winters. Or maybe it’s the Irish influence – there’s great writing in Cape Breton too.
I just finished his Colony of Unrequited Love, which is a fictionalised biography of Joe Smallwood, the man who brought Newfoundland into Confederation and then nearly bankrupted it. As a young man, Smallwood walked around Newfoundland several times organising the fishermen and the railway workers, before eschewing socialism for a career in Liberal politics.
I highly recommend it as both a great novel – the love story between Joe Smallwood and his political nemesis, a journalist called Fielding is very well told – and an interesting account of how England shafted Newfoundland for three hundred years and then passed it on to the nice Canadians when they were done with it.
Although the Germans etc have been very good to us, I can’t help thinking sometimes that confederation with Canada might have been the best thing for Ireland, if we had been able to paddle the island across.
There’s a wonderful account of Smallwood and some other Liberals going to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of confederation, their gradual realisation that the Canadian negotiators were so nice that they would agree to whatever demands the Newfies made, and their complete inability to take advantage of that, due to their ongoing complete inability to see the woods for the Liberal trees.
Story. Of. Effing. Atlantic. Canada.
The Navigator of New York is set in St. John’s and New York and is the story of the abandoned son of an Artic explorer who tries to overcome the pain of his childhood by making it to the North Pole. As with the other book, Johnston peoples Navigator with real characters such as Robert Peary et al. And makes the explorer circle sound like the pack of egotistical maniacs I always imagined them to be.
Like today’s mountaineers.
I know this is a bit late, but I was really struck by the death of that climber on Everest recently. There was a big debate about it in Canada. Of course, two days later, some Canadian climbers saved a man in similar (but not as bad) circumstances. So it was all about how Canadians are the nicest people in the world for a bit. (They can be a bit smug sometimes, but it’s okay because they are tremendously nice people).
But then an Albertan (Albertans are not as nice as other Canadians is an unspoken national instinct here, usually unspoken because Canucks are too polite, currently unspoken because the Albertans are in charge) female climber, who had to leave a partner behind on Everest a number of years ago, got into the fray saying abandonment was the correct approach as you have to keep moving. Which of course, coming from a woman, was particularly difficult for people to take, and so on it went.
What the effing hell are they all doing up there in the first place, is what I want to know?
Is there to be no mystery in the world anymore?
What is it about men (and some women now too) that they have to dominate everything, or take it apart to figure out how it works, or have races over getting to some point on the horizon? Why can’t they just sit back and enjoy it for what it is?
That’s what I spent yesterday doing.
Sitting back enjoying it.
Of course, I’m still coming down from my experience so a lot of the day was spent wondering where all the people I spent all my time with were, and what they were doing. Sort of like the day after Glastonbury, the same type of exhausted emptiness, but with the glow of the experience keeping you upright.
Then Paul cooked me supper. Again.
I would not have made it through the last six weeks without my roomies.
Seriously.
And we ate and talked about religion, which is what we talk about because he’s a pastor who is on a very arduous journey at the moment, and I’ll talk about anything, so long as I can do it at length in a very opinionated manner.
Which religion is good for.
And also, because I have been forced to re-examine my attitudes to faith in the last few weeks.
The woman who administered the office in Glace Bay was a Baptist.
We’d have these endless arguments about original sin. She was convinced of it. I don’t have any time for it, as I believe it is just a two thousand year old male antidote to their ancient fear and jealousy of women’s ability to take part in the creation myth. Which we have never gotten round to reframing, despite the fact that since then, men have figured out how we do it, and taken over the business of birth, and even taken on the mantle of co-parenting.
Yes, I’m still thinking about framing.
Did you know that there are no midwives in Nova Scotia? Well, there are, but they are not allowed to practice here the way they are in Ireland. Isn’t that just insane?
Anyways, at the same time as disagreeing with her absolutely, I realised that it was Ruth’s faith that brought her into the office every day. And her contribution was tremendous.
And she was a lot more sure of her role in life than I am.
But maybe that’s because she was an older woman.
Paul and I talked about the Eucharist last night. We were eating flat bread with Nova Scotia’s famous German sausage (unbelieveably good) and salad, and I said it was strange that this is probably somewhat similar to what Jesus had at the Last Supper, and yet if we want to be Christians we have to sit in a cold building being lectured at before eating a stale wafer, in a totally stylised us and them event, instead of all sitting round in somebody’s house, eating pitta bread and olives with a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
I’d do that anytime.
Paul just smiles to himself when I do this, and then goes off to the computer room to type furiously.
I have a strong suspicion that I am contributing to his sermons in some small way.
I saw a great poster in Just Us! a few months back. It said: “When I feed the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why they are poor they call me a communist.”
That’s what annoys me about religion, and particularly the Nova Scotia versions of it – Unitarian, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic - which is very focused on the church being a tool for good in the community (as opposed to being an opportunity to socialise). Doing good works is a fine human endeavour and we should all do it. But questioning the underlying cause of human suffering is more important. Otherwise we are just treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Listen Up, United Way!
That's what I like about organisations like St. Vincent de Paul in Ireland. They got stuck into the politics of poverty. And reframed the debate in the nineties.
And Oxfam. Oxfam is one of the best organisations in the world for that.
My friend accentmonkey has just left Oxfam Ireland after making a tremendous contribution to the organisation. They hired her to run a second-hand bookshop, she figured that out in ten seconds, and then proceeded to position them as a funky, politically astute, trendy cause in the national media, building strong relationships with journalists and donors and other key groups. Which is what Oxfam in other countries was doing, but they hadn't figured it out properly in Ireland.
As well as raising their profile in the media, she developed a successful business in the shop and also had to face the challenge of going to work in a charity shop with a sofa near Junkie-ville, with all the stress that entails.
You say you're tired, girl. And you sound tired. Quite rightly. Remember, there is no more arduous job in the world than working your butt off for people who don't have the money to give you stock options.
Half the people in the world have never used a telephone. And you overcame your hatred of said object to make life better for them.
You need to refocus your energies on yourself and Mr. Monkey. If you never do this type of work again it's not a problem, because you've done more than most people. But knowing you as I do, I imagine it won't be long before you are writing letters of outrage about some other cause you've come across in your full, meaningful life. And then sorting it out without getting up anyone's nose, or asking for any kudos, or expecting any of the rest of us to get off our asses and get involved.
Before waking up again one morning to think bah!, why do I do this?
I love when you do that, because your periods of outrage at the world's seeming inability to let you fix it all by yourself follow the same modus operandi - overwhelming irritation at the incompetence of others, followed by a swift stroke of genius that ensures you glide majestically past the effing nincompoops who are blocking the solution - that you use in your many successful efforts to fix the world.
All that 'bah' is is mental exhaustion, I think.
And you probably won't get too much thanks for what you did for Oxfam, because it's an NGO, and you are a woman who doesn't see the point in wasting energy on promoting yourself when you can be promoting your cause.
Like so many others, who climb the Everest of poverty purely to clean up the discarded oxygen tanks and care for the Sherpas, while the mountaineers of charity sit around and brag about the glorious torture of their tough ascent and just GET IN THE BLOODY WAY.
You should be very very proud of what you achieved for Oxfam.
I know I am very very proud of you.
Big kiss from Nova Scotia.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Second may be first loser, but it's other things too
I woke up this morning to the phone ringing at ten. It was one of my election volunteers, one who mostly did nothing, except torment the vulnerable members of my team by finding their weak spot and poking at it.
He wanted to speak to the woman of the house where I was staying.
I said she was still in bed. I didn’t mention that he had woken me up, as I couldn’t make that sentence yet, never mind say it.
You tell her that A* Mc****, her first cousin wants to talk to her now.
This in a really peremptory manner that let me know the dislike was mutual.
Half asleep, really annoyed, and quite delighted not to have to be nice to him despite the fact that he didn’t pull his weight anymore, I just hung up.
And went back to sleep. A couple of minutes later, after he’d hopped round his living room in rage a few times, he called back.
This time he woke the woman of the house and she took the call.
But I got up anyway.
Meanie – depriving me of that precious lie-in, I thought.
Turns out his sister had died.
Ooops.
Anyways, it’s over.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER!!!!!!
I am home in Halifax after a long, long drive back from Cape Breton which thankfully I got to share with my colleague and good friend Swampy (remind me to tell you why he’s called Swampy one day) after picking him up from the Tim Horton’s on Exit 21 an hour and a half late.
Bless him, he didn’t say a word.
Swampy did E-Day in his home riding of Pictou East. Which he won as I knew he would as he is a genius at that kind of thing. But we had a good chat about why my candidate didn’t win and I feel much better now.
That’s right.
My candidate didn’t win.
The incumbent held his seat by 1,100 votes.
http://www.cbc.ca/nsvotes2006/riding/023/
I was one devastated little Queenie last night. We knew about halfway through the boxes. But we had to sit there and take the beating.
Her grace was what saved me.
Up to the church hall then for the party which was a non-starter of course but I got to see a bit of the party in Halifax on tv. And learned that my home riding of Halifax Citadel went NDP to Leonard, who’s a good friend at this stage, what with canvassing since October with him.
And the NDP is up five seats.
And all my politicians got home safely.
We own Metro. Metro is Halifax Regional Municipality and the surrounding ridings.
The more urbanised Nova Scotia gets, the better we do.
The Liberals are in complete disarray. Their leader didn’t win a seat and said he was through with it.
The Tories lost four seats to us and have only 23 seats.
But they will form the next government.
And when my candidate made her thank you speech and said lovely things about me and the campaign manager, it was all I could do not to cry.
I bolted into the ladies and looked at my face under a strong light for the first time in about three weeks.
Ewwwww.
Need a facial real bad.
I mean real bad.
A five week diet of Tim Hortons doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes and take away has not given me the skin of a maiden. More like a midden.
But the benefit of not being in government is that I’ll have time to heal and get back to full health again.
My back is in bits.
Two weeks of a 5’ 10” girl sleeping in a 5’8” bed with a footboard, plus three weeks of working at a low desk while sitting on a conference chair, plus all the driving, plus no exercise has done for it.
Yoga class next week. Some soothing stretching is needed.
But my candidate got 29% of the vote. We pulled a hefty percentage of our vote.
And I had a wonderful experience. I learned a lot. I met lots of really interesting new people. I cemented some friendships forever. I found my Cape Breton experience very rewarding. Almost spiritual in a way that I cannot put my finger on. But it was a combination of spending time with people who are religious, but all different types, so it wasn’t dogmatic, and the kind of pastoral work I ended up doing in the office as well as working on E-Day.
Although at three am last night, as I was on the beach throwing stones at the moon and yelling at the stars about the unfairness of it all, I didn’t feel this way.
All the what ifs and could bes and should haves.
Did I work my team hard enough, did I train them well enough, did I get enough volunteers, were there people sitting at home wondering why they didn’t get a call to help out on E-Day…?
But you just gotta let them go.
It’s done.
We did eighty drives. We called sixty one polls. We had a team of almost fifty people on the day. We got over 2,000 votes out.
It’s done. I did my best.
The fact that many of the people I had working with me had cancer, or had learning difficulties, or had massive domestic challenges, or had no money, or had nothing else to do except hang around the office all day and chat was not a hindrance. It was part of the challenge of pulling it all together in a seamless piece where everyone felt valued and everyone gave their best. Whatever that was.
My campaign manager was a union guy from Ontario, who has spent the last couple of years organising Walmart workers and was both an inspiration and a hilarious example of how utter calm or sang froid and apoplectic rage or stress can easily co-exist in the same person at the same time.
He was a big man, so that might have helped.
And my candidate and her husband and family were a great example of how to treat your neighbour as yourself.
I learned a lot. I stretched my patience levels out a lot. That can only be a good thing.
I also ran my first E-Day by myself.
But we were up against it.
The old ways.
While I got hassle from the Returning Office for delivering sandwiches and cookies to our poll agents, the Liberal candidate was going round handing his agents envelopes containing $50 (I was told this, I didn’t see it myself).
Maybe that’s why he won.
Even if we had had $2,500 to spend on E-Day we wouldn’t do that. You volunteer for the NDP, you volunteer.
It’s why the Liberals are traditionally strong in Cape Breton. They get you your job, your pension, your compensation. Even if they don’t they pretend they do and some people believe them.
But I think what happened was that the Liberals pulled the heartstrings of Cape Bretoners by talking about emigration and jobs. Not that they actually have a clue how to stop emigration or create jobs. But they struck a chord.
Funny how Charlie Haughey died the day I got shafted by the Canadian equivalent of Fianna Fail.
Well, not me personally.
But he used to talk the same bullshit, didn’t he?
Well, my mother says I should be merciful and I know lots of people who think he was a great man, or an interesting and human character at least.
I just don’t like people like him.
I think if you find a vulnerable person’s weak spot, you should teach them how to cover it or protect it, or heal it. Not stick your fingernail into it.
Anyways, going to read the letter I got from accentmonkey and have a sleep.
He wanted to speak to the woman of the house where I was staying.
I said she was still in bed. I didn’t mention that he had woken me up, as I couldn’t make that sentence yet, never mind say it.
You tell her that A* Mc****, her first cousin wants to talk to her now.
This in a really peremptory manner that let me know the dislike was mutual.
Half asleep, really annoyed, and quite delighted not to have to be nice to him despite the fact that he didn’t pull his weight anymore, I just hung up.
And went back to sleep. A couple of minutes later, after he’d hopped round his living room in rage a few times, he called back.
This time he woke the woman of the house and she took the call.
But I got up anyway.
Meanie – depriving me of that precious lie-in, I thought.
Turns out his sister had died.
Ooops.
Anyways, it’s over.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER!!!!!!
I am home in Halifax after a long, long drive back from Cape Breton which thankfully I got to share with my colleague and good friend Swampy (remind me to tell you why he’s called Swampy one day) after picking him up from the Tim Horton’s on Exit 21 an hour and a half late.
Bless him, he didn’t say a word.
Swampy did E-Day in his home riding of Pictou East. Which he won as I knew he would as he is a genius at that kind of thing. But we had a good chat about why my candidate didn’t win and I feel much better now.
That’s right.
My candidate didn’t win.
The incumbent held his seat by 1,100 votes.
http://www.cbc.ca/nsvotes2006/riding/023/
I was one devastated little Queenie last night. We knew about halfway through the boxes. But we had to sit there and take the beating.
Her grace was what saved me.
Up to the church hall then for the party which was a non-starter of course but I got to see a bit of the party in Halifax on tv. And learned that my home riding of Halifax Citadel went NDP to Leonard, who’s a good friend at this stage, what with canvassing since October with him.
And the NDP is up five seats.
And all my politicians got home safely.
We own Metro. Metro is Halifax Regional Municipality and the surrounding ridings.
The more urbanised Nova Scotia gets, the better we do.
The Liberals are in complete disarray. Their leader didn’t win a seat and said he was through with it.
The Tories lost four seats to us and have only 23 seats.
But they will form the next government.
And when my candidate made her thank you speech and said lovely things about me and the campaign manager, it was all I could do not to cry.
I bolted into the ladies and looked at my face under a strong light for the first time in about three weeks.
Ewwwww.
Need a facial real bad.
I mean real bad.
A five week diet of Tim Hortons doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes and take away has not given me the skin of a maiden. More like a midden.
But the benefit of not being in government is that I’ll have time to heal and get back to full health again.
My back is in bits.
Two weeks of a 5’ 10” girl sleeping in a 5’8” bed with a footboard, plus three weeks of working at a low desk while sitting on a conference chair, plus all the driving, plus no exercise has done for it.
Yoga class next week. Some soothing stretching is needed.
But my candidate got 29% of the vote. We pulled a hefty percentage of our vote.
And I had a wonderful experience. I learned a lot. I met lots of really interesting new people. I cemented some friendships forever. I found my Cape Breton experience very rewarding. Almost spiritual in a way that I cannot put my finger on. But it was a combination of spending time with people who are religious, but all different types, so it wasn’t dogmatic, and the kind of pastoral work I ended up doing in the office as well as working on E-Day.
Although at three am last night, as I was on the beach throwing stones at the moon and yelling at the stars about the unfairness of it all, I didn’t feel this way.
All the what ifs and could bes and should haves.
Did I work my team hard enough, did I train them well enough, did I get enough volunteers, were there people sitting at home wondering why they didn’t get a call to help out on E-Day…?
But you just gotta let them go.
It’s done.
We did eighty drives. We called sixty one polls. We had a team of almost fifty people on the day. We got over 2,000 votes out.
It’s done. I did my best.
The fact that many of the people I had working with me had cancer, or had learning difficulties, or had massive domestic challenges, or had no money, or had nothing else to do except hang around the office all day and chat was not a hindrance. It was part of the challenge of pulling it all together in a seamless piece where everyone felt valued and everyone gave their best. Whatever that was.
My campaign manager was a union guy from Ontario, who has spent the last couple of years organising Walmart workers and was both an inspiration and a hilarious example of how utter calm or sang froid and apoplectic rage or stress can easily co-exist in the same person at the same time.
He was a big man, so that might have helped.
And my candidate and her husband and family were a great example of how to treat your neighbour as yourself.
I learned a lot. I stretched my patience levels out a lot. That can only be a good thing.
I also ran my first E-Day by myself.
But we were up against it.
The old ways.
While I got hassle from the Returning Office for delivering sandwiches and cookies to our poll agents, the Liberal candidate was going round handing his agents envelopes containing $50 (I was told this, I didn’t see it myself).
Maybe that’s why he won.
Even if we had had $2,500 to spend on E-Day we wouldn’t do that. You volunteer for the NDP, you volunteer.
It’s why the Liberals are traditionally strong in Cape Breton. They get you your job, your pension, your compensation. Even if they don’t they pretend they do and some people believe them.
But I think what happened was that the Liberals pulled the heartstrings of Cape Bretoners by talking about emigration and jobs. Not that they actually have a clue how to stop emigration or create jobs. But they struck a chord.
Funny how Charlie Haughey died the day I got shafted by the Canadian equivalent of Fianna Fail.
Well, not me personally.
But he used to talk the same bullshit, didn’t he?
Well, my mother says I should be merciful and I know lots of people who think he was a great man, or an interesting and human character at least.
I just don’t like people like him.
I think if you find a vulnerable person’s weak spot, you should teach them how to cover it or protect it, or heal it. Not stick your fingernail into it.
Anyways, going to read the letter I got from accentmonkey and have a sleep.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
E-Day 5.35pm
85 minutes to go.
Can Queenie bear the tension anymore?
Guess she's gonna have to.
And after a quick scan on CBC, Queenie rocks big time with regards to her policy work on the environment - http://www.cbc.ca/ns/story/nsv-environment20060608.html
But you all knew that.
Thankfully, a blogging friend covered the NJ bear in the tree story - my work goes on without me.
Can Queenie bear the tension anymore?
Guess she's gonna have to.
And after a quick scan on CBC, Queenie rocks big time with regards to her policy work on the environment - http://www.cbc.ca/ns/story/nsv-environment20060608.html
But you all knew that.
Thankfully, a blogging friend covered the NJ bear in the tree story - my work goes on without me.
E-Day 3.38pm
Three hours and twenty two minutes to go.
The polls close at 7pm.
The results are in at 8pm
www.cbc.ca and click on Nova Scotia if you want to check them.
The polls close at 7pm.
The results are in at 8pm
www.cbc.ca and click on Nova Scotia if you want to check them.
Monday, June 12, 2006
E-1 We'll know in 30 hours
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gotta go.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Gotta go.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
E3 - Waiting for the wet shoe to drop
E-3. Time is so elastic, isn’t it. At the beginning of a campaign, even before it begins, the time yawns in front of you. You think you’ll never get to the end of the line. But you get busy and time passes and then one day you lift your head and it’s E-3.
Late on E-3.
I’m in the campaign office, waiting for central campaign to finish the last phone canvass. Then I have to print out all the voter records and get ready for E-Day.
It’s been an interesting week, up here in Cape Breton.
I’m staying in a town not far from Sydney. Everyone has cancer. Well, not everyone, but a substantial number of people with whom I am working my ass off in order to win a seat will not be alive when I come back to help them defend the seat.
That’s kinda scary.
It’s all environmentally-related.
The Sydney Tar Ponds I mentioned before. I won’t go into it again.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It was my first anniversary in Canada on Thursday. I had been planning to spend it thinking highly intellectual thoughts about how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve experienced and how intense its been, blah blah blah, in what must be one of the most challenging, interesting and (at times) emotionally and physically stressful years of my life, but thankfully (for you lot), I was too busy to blog, and spent the day working in the office, with the usual crew of helpers, and breeze shooters, eating Mabel Davies’ egg sandwiches, answering the phone, sorting out the e-day packs, fund-raising, looking after sign locations, drives to the polls, recruiting volunteers, more volunteers, more volunteers, talking to the candidate, getting the foot canvassers out the door into the rain, going to Tim’s for coffee and TimBits.
Kind of ironic really. A circle of my adult life complete. The first really grown-up political thing I did. Being repeated for the nth time, but almost duplicated this time.
Right down to the Atlantic mist.
Except this time I get to hang out with a young female timber wolf. Who comes to visit with her owner every day.
And there’s Ebony the standard poodle. And Shandelle and Eoin the incredibly cute kids. And all the elderly members who stop in every day for a chat.
It’s a regular Sesame Street round here. The advance team for tomorrow’s rally arrived tonight and I could see the disdain in their eyes. I shall complain vociferously about it when all this is over.
This is what it is about. Groups of people getting together to create momentum for change. Maybe we’re not as glamorous as The West Wing, nor as media-interesting as a metro campaign, but we’re getting there.
Anyways, my campaign manager is pacing a hole in the carpet and we’re going to shut down the numbers soon and get started, so I’ll go for now.
Late on E-3.
I’m in the campaign office, waiting for central campaign to finish the last phone canvass. Then I have to print out all the voter records and get ready for E-Day.
It’s been an interesting week, up here in Cape Breton.
I’m staying in a town not far from Sydney. Everyone has cancer. Well, not everyone, but a substantial number of people with whom I am working my ass off in order to win a seat will not be alive when I come back to help them defend the seat.
That’s kinda scary.
It’s all environmentally-related.
The Sydney Tar Ponds I mentioned before. I won’t go into it again.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
It was my first anniversary in Canada on Thursday. I had been planning to spend it thinking highly intellectual thoughts about how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve experienced and how intense its been, blah blah blah, in what must be one of the most challenging, interesting and (at times) emotionally and physically stressful years of my life, but thankfully (for you lot), I was too busy to blog, and spent the day working in the office, with the usual crew of helpers, and breeze shooters, eating Mabel Davies’ egg sandwiches, answering the phone, sorting out the e-day packs, fund-raising, looking after sign locations, drives to the polls, recruiting volunteers, more volunteers, more volunteers, talking to the candidate, getting the foot canvassers out the door into the rain, going to Tim’s for coffee and TimBits.
Kind of ironic really. A circle of my adult life complete. The first really grown-up political thing I did. Being repeated for the nth time, but almost duplicated this time.
Right down to the Atlantic mist.
Except this time I get to hang out with a young female timber wolf. Who comes to visit with her owner every day.
And there’s Ebony the standard poodle. And Shandelle and Eoin the incredibly cute kids. And all the elderly members who stop in every day for a chat.
It’s a regular Sesame Street round here. The advance team for tomorrow’s rally arrived tonight and I could see the disdain in their eyes. I shall complain vociferously about it when all this is over.
This is what it is about. Groups of people getting together to create momentum for change. Maybe we’re not as glamorous as The West Wing, nor as media-interesting as a metro campaign, but we’re getting there.
Anyways, my campaign manager is pacing a hole in the carpet and we’re going to shut down the numbers soon and get started, so I’ll go for now.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
E-7 One week to go. T-14 Two weeks to go
Oh my God, it's only one week to go.
And Himself is coming home a week later, or so he announced recently.
Excellent timing on his part, doncha think. Hysterical, stressed, election-mode Queenie should be well and truly gone by E+7.
Unless we lose of course. In which case morose, devastated Queenie will still be mooching around the house.
Unless she's morphed into vindictive, nasty 'fuck 'em all' Queenie.
Or of course it might be hysterical, stressed, post-election-win Queenie...
No.
Definitely not.
Even if they win.
Queenie is enjoying having charge of her brain again. Back into the message box she will not be prodded. No sirree bob. If the medium is the message, then the message has escaped.
So to speak.
It's taking a while for Queenie to understand that she's not in command central anymore. She asked her campaign manager if it was okay if she went for lunch yesterday and he looked at her as if she were insane.
This must be what it's like to leave the army.
The constituency is very like one of Queenie's former Democratic Left campaigns - Cork North Central in 1994. Strong female candidate with a very supportive husband and a large, supportive family. Working class constituency that the current government has ignored. Factory closures and long-term unemployment. Chronic ill health and lack of community health services.
This town could do with half a million invested in the facade alone. Just to cheer it up a bit. There's a Tim Hortons. There's an A&W. There's a Home Depot. There's a nice river running through the town but the big houses built alongside each bank prevent much public access and they all have Liberal signs in their yards.
And some sidewalks. There aren't enough sidewalks in the town.
There's a beach. But the water is polluted.
Down the road is Sydney Tar Ponds.
So there's a lot of illness here.
Some people say the illness is due to bad diet, smoking and alcoholism.
Possibly.
What causes the bad diet, smoking and alcoholism?
Poverty, stress, unemployment.
And as I said, down the road is the Sydney Tar Ponds
Anyways, the omens are good - Queenie feels very good about this riding.
Queenie is organising E-Day. Election day. It's called pulling the vote.
Identify the support. Ensure it gets to the polls. Record the fact that it did.
Fascinating stuff. Very methodical. The kind of work she likes.
Still, only one week to go. It'll be great when it's over.
And Himself is coming home a week later, or so he announced recently.
Excellent timing on his part, doncha think. Hysterical, stressed, election-mode Queenie should be well and truly gone by E+7.
Unless we lose of course. In which case morose, devastated Queenie will still be mooching around the house.
Unless she's morphed into vindictive, nasty 'fuck 'em all' Queenie.
Or of course it might be hysterical, stressed, post-election-win Queenie...
No.
Definitely not.
Even if they win.
Queenie is enjoying having charge of her brain again. Back into the message box she will not be prodded. No sirree bob. If the medium is the message, then the message has escaped.
So to speak.
It's taking a while for Queenie to understand that she's not in command central anymore. She asked her campaign manager if it was okay if she went for lunch yesterday and he looked at her as if she were insane.
This must be what it's like to leave the army.
The constituency is very like one of Queenie's former Democratic Left campaigns - Cork North Central in 1994. Strong female candidate with a very supportive husband and a large, supportive family. Working class constituency that the current government has ignored. Factory closures and long-term unemployment. Chronic ill health and lack of community health services.
This town could do with half a million invested in the facade alone. Just to cheer it up a bit. There's a Tim Hortons. There's an A&W. There's a Home Depot. There's a nice river running through the town but the big houses built alongside each bank prevent much public access and they all have Liberal signs in their yards.
And some sidewalks. There aren't enough sidewalks in the town.
There's a beach. But the water is polluted.
Down the road is Sydney Tar Ponds.
So there's a lot of illness here.
Some people say the illness is due to bad diet, smoking and alcoholism.
Possibly.
What causes the bad diet, smoking and alcoholism?
Poverty, stress, unemployment.
And as I said, down the road is the Sydney Tar Ponds
Anyways, the omens are good - Queenie feels very good about this riding.
Queenie is organising E-Day. Election day. It's called pulling the vote.
Identify the support. Ensure it gets to the polls. Record the fact that it did.
Fascinating stuff. Very methodical. The kind of work she likes.
Still, only one week to go. It'll be great when it's over.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
E-14 Nominations Close and we take a breath
Nominations closed today.
Apparently that's a big day here.
I can't remember if it's the same at home.
Anyways, a number of things happened today.
The men were being extra-special-nice.
Queenie's wrath is obviously more impressive than she thought.
She only had a quiet word with one of them.
But the word is out.
The ladeez were coming down with compliments about their shoes and work and commitment to the cause etc.
To the extent that we almost ran out of salt.
And Queenie is the first to be moved out to a campaign.
She is assured the two issues are not connected.
She doesn't care.
She's off to the action.
In Cape Breton apparently.
That should be fun.
I was saving Cape Breton for when Polly comes over. But I'll avoid the nice bits.
Shouldn't be too hard where I'm going.
We don't win too many seats in the mountains.
So Queenie is doing a mix to celebrate.
She's going to hand it out at work tomorrow, to thank all the incredibly cool people she has met in the last few weeks.
We are going to make history boys and girls, so we need a soundtrack.
First up, Maggie May.
I know, I know...
He can't be perfect. Our Great Leader.
1973, he could have picked Led, he could have picked Springsteen, he could have picked
Alice Cooper for chrissakes.
That's what he really wanted.
So we'll put on No More Mr Nice Guy next.
And now I'm going to put on Thin Lizzy, The Boys are back in town.
For the boys.
For being so nice today.
It was appreciated.
Then, I can't get next to you, by The Temptations, which is the song Queenie chose for the campaign, but which didn't get picked, because it was too cool.
That's Nova Scotia for ya.
Moby, Lift me up. Ya gotta have a bit of Moby. Anthemic, boppy, happy clappy music with soul-destroying lyrics.
Speaking of, Barbara told me Glastonbury is not on this year and so tickets to Electric Picnic are already sold out. So much for that plan.
Never mind.
Miracles, by Firstborn, because you always need one of them.
And then a bit of AfroCelt SoundSystem. Saor/ Free/ News from Nowhere. For Angel and her man. Take the sunglasses off girl, you're at home now!
Next, Boredoms, Two Circles, because everyone at home in Ireland in the other one was off watching them while I was home having a nervous breakdown. Or in work having one. Can't remember which.
Because I was missing the gig, of course.
Not because I was letting the election stress get to me.
The Doves' Firesuite, because Hotspurr the Goddess of Spin likes her Doves.
Then speed it up again with Firestarter, by The Prodigy.
For our own Special Agent Felicity Shagwell. For her battle against Dr. Evil and mini-me.
Took a while for them to notice the flames, but they did eventually.
Mofo, from U2's Pop, because that's what I feel like most days. But some days you gotta stand your ground.
Then a bit of Linkin' Park.
For a nice long stretch of highway up towards Canso.
I can't wait to do that drive.
Better hurry up - I am actually feeling sleepy for the first time in about a month, as opposed to just exhausted and wired, so I should take advantage of it and go to bed.
The Who. Of Course.
Bloc Party. Of Course.
The Wailin' Jennies, Beautiful Dawn. In case we have one.
And finally, The Waterboys, When ye go away.
For when they all do.
Campaigns.
Stress. Heartache. Conflict. Herculean effort. Boredom.
One of the days I'll know why I do this.
Old friendships. New friendships. The first coffee of the day. The chase. The release. The coverage. The mop up. The endless trips to Wendy's. Sitting in the sun talking about old campaigns. The total inter-connectedness of everything everyone does for a finite period of time. The sore feet. The back aches. The shared bottle of Tylenol.
The store of memories growing.
Maybe it's all I know how to do?
Apparently that's a big day here.
I can't remember if it's the same at home.
Anyways, a number of things happened today.
The men were being extra-special-nice.
Queenie's wrath is obviously more impressive than she thought.
She only had a quiet word with one of them.
But the word is out.
The ladeez were coming down with compliments about their shoes and work and commitment to the cause etc.
To the extent that we almost ran out of salt.
And Queenie is the first to be moved out to a campaign.
She is assured the two issues are not connected.
She doesn't care.
She's off to the action.
In Cape Breton apparently.
That should be fun.
I was saving Cape Breton for when Polly comes over. But I'll avoid the nice bits.
Shouldn't be too hard where I'm going.
We don't win too many seats in the mountains.
So Queenie is doing a mix to celebrate.
She's going to hand it out at work tomorrow, to thank all the incredibly cool people she has met in the last few weeks.
We are going to make history boys and girls, so we need a soundtrack.
First up, Maggie May.
I know, I know...
He can't be perfect. Our Great Leader.
1973, he could have picked Led, he could have picked Springsteen, he could have picked
Alice Cooper for chrissakes.
That's what he really wanted.
So we'll put on No More Mr Nice Guy next.
And now I'm going to put on Thin Lizzy, The Boys are back in town.
For the boys.
For being so nice today.
It was appreciated.
Then, I can't get next to you, by The Temptations, which is the song Queenie chose for the campaign, but which didn't get picked, because it was too cool.
That's Nova Scotia for ya.
Moby, Lift me up. Ya gotta have a bit of Moby. Anthemic, boppy, happy clappy music with soul-destroying lyrics.
Speaking of, Barbara told me Glastonbury is not on this year and so tickets to Electric Picnic are already sold out. So much for that plan.
Never mind.
Miracles, by Firstborn, because you always need one of them.
And then a bit of AfroCelt SoundSystem. Saor/ Free/ News from Nowhere. For Angel and her man. Take the sunglasses off girl, you're at home now!
Next, Boredoms, Two Circles, because everyone at home in Ireland in the other one was off watching them while I was home having a nervous breakdown. Or in work having one. Can't remember which.
Because I was missing the gig, of course.
Not because I was letting the election stress get to me.
The Doves' Firesuite, because Hotspurr the Goddess of Spin likes her Doves.
Then speed it up again with Firestarter, by The Prodigy.
For our own Special Agent Felicity Shagwell. For her battle against Dr. Evil and mini-me.
Took a while for them to notice the flames, but they did eventually.
Mofo, from U2's Pop, because that's what I feel like most days. But some days you gotta stand your ground.
Then a bit of Linkin' Park.
For a nice long stretch of highway up towards Canso.
I can't wait to do that drive.
Better hurry up - I am actually feeling sleepy for the first time in about a month, as opposed to just exhausted and wired, so I should take advantage of it and go to bed.
The Who. Of Course.
Bloc Party. Of Course.
The Wailin' Jennies, Beautiful Dawn. In case we have one.
And finally, The Waterboys, When ye go away.
For when they all do.
Campaigns.
Stress. Heartache. Conflict. Herculean effort. Boredom.
One of the days I'll know why I do this.
Old friendships. New friendships. The first coffee of the day. The chase. The release. The coverage. The mop up. The endless trips to Wendy's. Sitting in the sun talking about old campaigns. The total inter-connectedness of everything everyone does for a finite period of time. The sore feet. The back aches. The shared bottle of Tylenol.
The store of memories growing.
Maybe it's all I know how to do?
Monday, May 29, 2006
E-15 Skippy's trampling on our hearts
This is the face of evil.
I shit you not.
It's a work thing. I'm not at liberty to explain it here.
You guys have gotta trust me on this one.
Besides, there are those who read this who will understand. And they need a laugh.
So, why do we do this?
We were asking ourselves today.
Not for the glory. Oh no. That's for the men.
Not for the glamour. Although my sparkly sandals added a bit today. The only bit of me that sparkled today.
But there's nothing glamorous about the work I did today.
Dear X, it would be great if you would vote for us, because then we would invest in education and you would learn how to use punctuation properly.
Dear Y, it would be great if you would vote for us, because then we would ensure you got the tax break as well as those goddamn single mothers you were ranting about in your long capitalised email.
Dear Z, it would be great if you would vote for us, because ....
Why because?
If we all have the same platform and we all have the same vision, what's the difference?
The application.
We stand for dignity, for caring, for inclusion, for equality, for freedom of expression.
That's what we stand for.
It's all in the application, boys and girls.
No, there's absolutely no irony in what I am saying.
None.
You must be mistaking me for someone who was reduced to tears today by the blatant sexism wrapped up as 'the way we do things here' that's appeared in my workplace.
Tomorrow:
I am going to sing slowly to myself all day, quite possibly to the tune of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo:
I am the epitome of what I believe in and work for. I am a caring, inclusive, committed, experienced, talented, unique, bright, sparkling example of what the alternative could be for us all. I represent both the vision and the application of what we stand for. The how of things is as important to me as the what or the why.
I am surrounded by people like me. They cloak me in a forcefield of wit and humour and love that protects me from any permanent scarring. I cloak them in return and protect them.
What's going on doesn't matter, because it's people like us who will win in the end. We have to because the how of now is destroying everything.
The desire to control, to divide, and to manipulate always stems from a deep insecurity. So deep that it is often unrealised. That insecurity disappears when the desire to care becomes stronger.
It takes a long time for some people to get to that place.
The reason I know we will win in the end is because Mama Gaia's need to be cared for ain't gonna wait that long more...
It was 25 degrees today. In Halifax. In the Northern Atlantic.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
E-16 Bears in the Alps!
If you go down to the Alpine woods you're in for a big surprise: a 100kg wild brown bear who goes by the name of Bruno, writes Derek Scally in the Irish Times.
He has had the starring role in a three-week bear scare after leaving his home in the Italian Alps for Tirol in western Austria. He crossed the border into Bavaria last weekend, making him the first bear sighted in the region since 1842.
Italian nature groups say Bruno is likely to be one of 20 cubs born in the mountains since a group of Slovenian bears were let into the wild there a decade ago.
But, on his travels, Bruno is suspected of slaughtering dozens of sheep, chickens and racing pigeons, as well as breaking and entering several bee hives.
Bavarian police circulated blurry mugshots of Bruno, warning local people to keep clear of the violent animal. Bavarian environment minister Werner Schnapauff branded Bruno a problembär because he seemed fearless of approaching humans. Last Monday, the minister bowed to demands to allow farmers and hunters to shoot the bear on sight "in cases of physical or mortal danger".
Animal rights activists, angry at the decision of the Bavarians, were infuriated when, on Tuesday, Austrian authorities decided to follow suit.
Germany's Bild newspaper put an image of Bruno in a gun's crosshairs on its front page under the headline: "Death Sentence for Bear". But since the sentence was pronounced, Bruno has gone on the lam.
Hunters have tried without success to lure him into a 2m-wide aluminium tube trap. Another suggestion to set up snares was rejected by the director of Munich Zoo, Henning Wiesner. He told a Bavarian newspaper that a bear such as Bruno would rather gnaw off his own leg while dangling from a tree than get caught by hunters.
Mr Wiesner suggested using darts to knock Bruno out after locating him with a pack of hunting dogs. "The only problem is that no hunting dogs in Germany have ever smelled a bear," he said.
Yesterday it emerged that he has probably escaped Germany and is now in Tirol. But Austrian authorities say Bruno is an unbearable threat and will be killed when caught after they conduct a DNA test to make sure they have their bear.
Hoteliers in the Bavarian village of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Austrian border have jumped on the bandwagon. They're offering Bruno-spotting packages starting at €169 a night.
He has had the starring role in a three-week bear scare after leaving his home in the Italian Alps for Tirol in western Austria. He crossed the border into Bavaria last weekend, making him the first bear sighted in the region since 1842.
Italian nature groups say Bruno is likely to be one of 20 cubs born in the mountains since a group of Slovenian bears were let into the wild there a decade ago.
But, on his travels, Bruno is suspected of slaughtering dozens of sheep, chickens and racing pigeons, as well as breaking and entering several bee hives.
Bavarian police circulated blurry mugshots of Bruno, warning local people to keep clear of the violent animal. Bavarian environment minister Werner Schnapauff branded Bruno a problembär because he seemed fearless of approaching humans. Last Monday, the minister bowed to demands to allow farmers and hunters to shoot the bear on sight "in cases of physical or mortal danger".
Animal rights activists, angry at the decision of the Bavarians, were infuriated when, on Tuesday, Austrian authorities decided to follow suit.
Germany's Bild newspaper put an image of Bruno in a gun's crosshairs on its front page under the headline: "Death Sentence for Bear". But since the sentence was pronounced, Bruno has gone on the lam.
Hunters have tried without success to lure him into a 2m-wide aluminium tube trap. Another suggestion to set up snares was rejected by the director of Munich Zoo, Henning Wiesner. He told a Bavarian newspaper that a bear such as Bruno would rather gnaw off his own leg while dangling from a tree than get caught by hunters.
Mr Wiesner suggested using darts to knock Bruno out after locating him with a pack of hunting dogs. "The only problem is that no hunting dogs in Germany have ever smelled a bear," he said.
Yesterday it emerged that he has probably escaped Germany and is now in Tirol. But Austrian authorities say Bruno is an unbearable threat and will be killed when caught after they conduct a DNA test to make sure they have their bear.
Hoteliers in the Bavarian village of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on the Austrian border have jumped on the bandwagon. They're offering Bruno-spotting packages starting at €169 a night.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
E-21 The Age War has begun
Ben should be using his vote because he can be bloody sure that Brian will.
The Age War has begun
This was the last two lines of a great article by Andrew Rawnesley in last Sunday’s Observer, which I am only reading tonight because I am always in work.
The article was very close to my heart.
It was all about how the baby boomers are going to bankrupt us lot. And all we have to look forward to at the end of it is no pension and no kids to worry about when we get old. Which boils down to no kids to look after us when we grow old, of course.
I am being extreme. And I don’t really mind because I happen to think seniors are worth looking after. But nowhere is the building problem more evident than in Nova Scotia.
There are currently 95,000 seniors (that’s what we call them in polite Canada, you know them as old people, or aul’ wans, in Ireland) living in Nova Scotia. That’s about 10% of the population. By 2030(?) that will have gone up to about 150,000. And the population of Nova Scotia isn’t going to expand dramatically anytime soon, far from it. The population of under-fives, the people who will be in their mid-thirties in 2030, dropped by one fifth in the last ten years, to just 47,000-ish.
You do the math.
Seniors are expensive.
They need healthcare, long term care, nursing home care, drugs, palliative care, etc.
They get pensions.
They don’t pay much tax.
Young people on the other hand, are cheap. If they don’t contribute you can just ship them off to the Oil Sands of Northern Alberta.
Of course, you don’t get their tax payments then.
You do the math.
So what do we do?
The article in the Observer said that politicians would find it difficult to balance this war of the generations.
Bloody right, they will.
The first thing that needs to be done is for someone, somewhere, to tackle the ridiculous price of drugs.
There is no reason why they should be so expensive. Other than the stock market.
No, there isn’t.
India has a remarkable generic drugs industry that should be examined for ways in which to apply it to other jurisdictions.
The second thing that needs to be done is for a model of community care to be worked out, so that elderly people don’t need as much hospital care as they do now.
That means rethinking workplace models so that 9 – 5 m/f patterns are finally abolished and giving communities some money and time to develop ways in which to care for older and younger members on a more flexible basis so that working age people can work.
Work however it suits the community. Part-time, or for a couple of months a year, or whatever. But the days of one young, fit, educated, experienced person staying at home full-time for years to look after one other person (or maybe two, if there’s enough money), while another person works ridiculous hours in order to deliver a necessary health or educational or other product or service to society MUST end.
I’m going to get it in the neck for that.
I don't care.
The nuclear family is not working. It takes a village to raise a child and a community to care for an elderly person and the reason why we have juvenile crime and scared old people is because we leave it up to hassled stressed parents who aren’t even sure they want to be together anymore to raise their children by themselves.
We should bring in ASBOs that involve sitting talking to old people for six hours a day. That would sort out juvenile crime in ten seconds.
They'd either refuse to reoffend out of boredom, or they'd refuse to leave the stories of the war and the old days because they're so interesting.
The third thing that must happen is that immigration must become more fluid. For chrissakes, I’m a productive member of Canadian society and I can’t even get a credit card. It took three months to get a work permit sorted out. It will take me months more to get a driver’s licence, years to get a mortgage or a health card if I want one.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m not a neurologist driving a cab because the Medical Association ‘doesn’t trust my experience and qualifications’.
Yeah. I believe you. I've been to the conferences.
If this part of the world has skills shortages and a need for people to come and work in the caring professions, then people who live in parts of the world and who want to come here to live and work should be able to without having to become full-time forever residents. They should have portable residencies. Like we do in the European Union.
Think globally, act locally is great for recycling your egg cartons, but sometimes you need to think locally and act globally.
I’m going to bed now – I’m very tired.
The Age War has begun
This was the last two lines of a great article by Andrew Rawnesley in last Sunday’s Observer, which I am only reading tonight because I am always in work.
The article was very close to my heart.
It was all about how the baby boomers are going to bankrupt us lot. And all we have to look forward to at the end of it is no pension and no kids to worry about when we get old. Which boils down to no kids to look after us when we grow old, of course.
I am being extreme. And I don’t really mind because I happen to think seniors are worth looking after. But nowhere is the building problem more evident than in Nova Scotia.
There are currently 95,000 seniors (that’s what we call them in polite Canada, you know them as old people, or aul’ wans, in Ireland) living in Nova Scotia. That’s about 10% of the population. By 2030(?) that will have gone up to about 150,000. And the population of Nova Scotia isn’t going to expand dramatically anytime soon, far from it. The population of under-fives, the people who will be in their mid-thirties in 2030, dropped by one fifth in the last ten years, to just 47,000-ish.
You do the math.
Seniors are expensive.
They need healthcare, long term care, nursing home care, drugs, palliative care, etc.
They get pensions.
They don’t pay much tax.
Young people on the other hand, are cheap. If they don’t contribute you can just ship them off to the Oil Sands of Northern Alberta.
Of course, you don’t get their tax payments then.
You do the math.
So what do we do?
The article in the Observer said that politicians would find it difficult to balance this war of the generations.
Bloody right, they will.
The first thing that needs to be done is for someone, somewhere, to tackle the ridiculous price of drugs.
There is no reason why they should be so expensive. Other than the stock market.
No, there isn’t.
India has a remarkable generic drugs industry that should be examined for ways in which to apply it to other jurisdictions.
The second thing that needs to be done is for a model of community care to be worked out, so that elderly people don’t need as much hospital care as they do now.
That means rethinking workplace models so that 9 – 5 m/f patterns are finally abolished and giving communities some money and time to develop ways in which to care for older and younger members on a more flexible basis so that working age people can work.
Work however it suits the community. Part-time, or for a couple of months a year, or whatever. But the days of one young, fit, educated, experienced person staying at home full-time for years to look after one other person (or maybe two, if there’s enough money), while another person works ridiculous hours in order to deliver a necessary health or educational or other product or service to society MUST end.
I’m going to get it in the neck for that.
I don't care.
The nuclear family is not working. It takes a village to raise a child and a community to care for an elderly person and the reason why we have juvenile crime and scared old people is because we leave it up to hassled stressed parents who aren’t even sure they want to be together anymore to raise their children by themselves.
We should bring in ASBOs that involve sitting talking to old people for six hours a day. That would sort out juvenile crime in ten seconds.
They'd either refuse to reoffend out of boredom, or they'd refuse to leave the stories of the war and the old days because they're so interesting.
The third thing that must happen is that immigration must become more fluid. For chrissakes, I’m a productive member of Canadian society and I can’t even get a credit card. It took three months to get a work permit sorted out. It will take me months more to get a driver’s licence, years to get a mortgage or a health card if I want one.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m not a neurologist driving a cab because the Medical Association ‘doesn’t trust my experience and qualifications’.
Yeah. I believe you. I've been to the conferences.
If this part of the world has skills shortages and a need for people to come and work in the caring professions, then people who live in parts of the world and who want to come here to live and work should be able to without having to become full-time forever residents. They should have portable residencies. Like we do in the European Union.
Think globally, act locally is great for recycling your egg cartons, but sometimes you need to think locally and act globally.
I’m going to bed now – I’m very tired.
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