Blame Canada

We Will Survive (Some Pre-Exam Encouragement by Suzie Chiodo)

2009-04-07T13:11:00.002-05:00

At first I was afraid, I was so worried
Hadn't done all of the readings, had no summaries
But then I spent so many nights
Studying reams and reams of law
And now my head's spinning so bad
And I'm not worried any more

I'm gonna clerk, gonna get a place
If not, I'll swallow 15 beers and get completely off my face
Weren't you the one who tried to crush me with your sighs
With your annoying 'does not compute'
Your vague answers, and your rolled eyes

But I don't care, I will survive
I'll pull consecutive all-nighters
And I will work up to the skies
Don't care what all these grants are for
Without them I'll still practice law
And I'll survive, I will survive, hey hey

It took all the strength I had not to fall apart
Kept thinking I would end up stacking shelves at Wal-Mart
And I spent hour after hour getting all the answers wrong
Then I grew strong
And I learned how to get along
And you see me, somebody who
When it comes to collateral warranties doesn't have a clue
Don't know which Charter test to pick
Can't get a handle on Ethics
But I'll just go to Molly Bloom's
And drink tequila till I'm sick

I will survive! We will survive!
Provided hangovers don't kill us I know we will stay alive
We've got all our lives to live
Expensive law advice to give
And we'll survive, we will survive, hey hey!

You know you've watched too much Battlestar Galactica when...

2008-05-04T20:37:00.002-05:00

1. You stub your toe and yell 'Frack!'
2. You don't automatically think of coffee when someone mentions Starbucks.
3. You develop a crisp English accent a la Gaius Baltar (uh-oh...)
4. You cut the corners off all your stationery. And your books.
5. You see your friend's identical twin and suspect her of being a Cylon.
6. You hear voices in your head and think it's Number Six.
7. You start up a cult dedicated to the Lords of Kobol.
8. You yell "We're right here!" when the characters start talking about finding Earth.
9. You name your firstborn daughter Caprica. And your second Boomer.
10. You start wondering where Admiral Adama gets his endless supply of whisky.

Lyon was a riot

2007-05-08T16:19:00.000-05:00

Ah, nothing like a good holiday. Joe and I just came back from a few days in Lyon (he had a business meeting and we tagged a long weekend on to the end of it). We ate in a traditional 'bouchon' (where the silk factory workers used to eat - lots of good hearty food made from cheap bits of cow and pig, like the brains and the snout...surprisingly delicious), took leisurely walks through cobbled streets, saw lots of old cathedrals (like the one we climbed up to, right) and ate obscene amounts of cheese.

We decided to finish the holiday with a meal in an incredibly posh restaurant. At the beginning of our meal, cheers from the bar next door told us Sarkozy had been elected president. At the end of our meal, the whiff of tear-gas as we walked out onto the street told us some people didn't like the idea. We'd decided to cycle back to our hotel (Lyon has a fab system where you can pay a few euros to rent a bike, then put it back at one of the many points scattered around the city), and we'd just got our bikes when we saw a crowd of people running away from the nearby square.

We went to take a look - and were greeted by a row of riot police, clouds of tear-gas, brainless protestors throwing bins and restauranteurs desperately bringing in tables from their patios. It was easy to get close without being in any actual danger, so we just stared for a good ten minutes. Then a bottle smashed a few feet away from me and we decided to get out of there. I'm glad we had bikes!

Here are the best photos, from a blog called riotporn that's a testament to the utter stupidity of humanity. Heck, why take part in reasoned debate when you can just lob a bin through the window of the nearest McDonald's?

Riot police running past the tourist information office, where we'd asked for directions to our restaurant just a few hours before.

At first I thought this guy was shooting rubber bullets, but it's actually tear-gas. The capsules burst in the air like fireworks, then shower down clouds that smell like burning plastic and make your eyes and throat sting.

We came across a burned-out car a few minutes up the road from our hotel. I guess someone wanted to remember Paris '05.

Getting there (slowly)

2007-04-06T11:14:00.000-05:00

Our house renovation is finally getting somewhere! Just a few weeks ago, Joe and I were eating dinner like this:

and now our kitchen is finished!!! Yaaaaay! Check it out:

Take a look at our incredibly posh living room too!

One more angle, because it looks so good:

We've still got the basement, the garage and the garden left to do, but that's most of the inside work done. I'm looking forward to working without the smell of varnish and the sound of nail guns : )

What global warming?

2007-04-06T11:07:00.000-05:00

We're a week into April and it's snowing outside. Yes, really! Global warming obviously hasn't reached Canada yet. So much for spring. (This pic is of our front garden this morning)

Mashing your toes on sharp objects and other handy household hints

2007-03-16T18:17:00.000-05:00

*Sigh* So we've been having the house & garden renovated for a year now, and I feel like it's finally time to vent. I came home from England at the beginning of February to find our kitchen missing. It still is. I've been living on cereal and restaurant food for the past 6 weeks. I'm not sure how many more bowls of muesli I can take!

But it's a great diet plan, especially when your fridge looks like this (for some reason, we had to have it panelled - don't ask me why):

I've also perfected the art of pushing past the dust covers that hang over the stairs. You have to be careful not to get any dust on you, while holding lots of things so you don't have to go back in 5 minutes for the rest of your stuff. You also have to be careful not to miss a step and brain yourself on the banisters (tricky when you're limping from an infected toe because you mashed it into your suitcase which you left lying around after coming back from England because you were too tired to unpack).

A few more weeks of this and I'll be qualified to join Cirque du Soleil.

So no kitchen, inconvenient stairs (which is a pain because there's dust covers for both sets of stairs, and they divide the two main parts of our house), and a guest room (right) that looks like Hezbollah's been at it with rocket launchers. Into this pristine scenario, Joe introduces the idea that we should have friends from England to stay for a week.

After I finished spitting fire, he told me I was inhospitable. So now we're not speaking.

On a positive note, our 3-year anniversary is coming up! We're planning to stay in and eat cereal.

Thanks

2007-03-14T18:15:00.000-05:00

By the way, thanks to all of you who posted condolences about my grandad - just to let you know I'm fine. The funeral was very sad (as funerals are) but it was great to be there with my family. I never hung out with my dad's side of the family very much when I was a kid, and I really feel like I'm making up for lost time. So there's good stuff too.

My grandad's flowers. He always called everyone 'buddy'. *Sigh*

Alas, poor muscles, I gave them hell

2007-03-14T18:05:00.000-05:00

I've been taking my skating to the next level lately and actually playing (very informal) matches with people who can actually play ice hockey. I went for the first time a few weeks back - it's taken a while to update you because my grandad died the next day, then I went back for the funeral, so everything's been thrown out of whack.

Anyway, I had the time of my life, and even though I skated about a tenth of the speed of everyone else, they were really nice and passed the puck to me and everything. That's what I like about Canada - even if you're not much good at something, people respect you just for giving it a shot. It helped that my English friend Nigel (an English person, living in Grimsby, who plays ice hockey - what are the chances?) kept yelling encouragements to me even though he was on the other team.

It was even worth the severe aches and pains I had to put up with for the following few days. I'm going next week, so I've got that to look forward to again. Got to cram in a few more matches before the season ends!

I'm in the Mail

2007-03-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

I was published in the Daily Mail travel section a few weeks back : ) For those of you who haven't seen it, it's online at: http://www.thisistravel.co.uk/travel/citybreaks/Five-unusual-romantic-breaks-article.html?in_article_id=47540

Granfer Mitchell, 5 July 1926 -20 Feb 2007

2007-02-23T10:59:00.000-05:00

My grandad died last Tuesday. I never saw him as much as I should have done, but whenever I did see him he was always kind and made me laugh. I'll miss him.

Weather wusses

2007-02-16T10:05:00.000-05:00

Canadians are always going on about 'wind chill'. "It's minus 10 outside, but minus 20 with the wind chill." In other words, the wind makes the weather colder than the thermometer says it is. I always thought this was melodramatic guff (how could the weather be colder than it really is?) and a way of weather forecasters making headlines, and this article says I'm right:

http://www.slate.com/id/2159370/?GT1=9129

As well as scrapping the wind chill, we should also lose the 'humidex'. This is the opposite of wind chill, saying the weather is hotter than it really is because of the humidity. More lame hysteria from a country that thinks it's living in the Arctic/Sahara (depending on the season) but is actually more like Maine. And while we're at it, let's get rid of the constant storm warnings! So there's going to be lots of snow - big deal! This is Canada! If you want less dramatic weather, move to England and live in perpetual drizzle.

After the storm

2007-02-14T17:28:00.000-05:00

I never thought I'd say this, but - yay, it's stopped snowing!! We've just spent an hour shovelling our driveway so we can go out to dinner tonight. Here's some more photos:

The guy across the road using his fancy snowblower to clear his driveway - skiver : ) Unfortunately, the storm's still going, blowing all the snow back across the driveway again - slightly pointless really.

The cliff of snow around my car. Joe and I have just finished shovelling all that away. My arms hurt. A lot.

My romantic cutesy side coming through : )

And of course, I couldn't let the day go by without building a snowman - or two. Well, it is Valentine's Day : ) That white thing on Mrs Snowman's head, by the way, is supposed to be a veil. Her lipstick is a nice shade of ketchup.

Snow way I'm going to work today

2007-02-14T10:10:00.001-05:00

My car is snowed in...

...and so are we (this is our back door - you can just see the top of our recycling bin, which is about 2 and a half feet high)

And here's our basement window - at ground level!!

From Istanbul to the Pyrenees...

2007-02-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

In case any of you wanted to find out about my recent travels, take a look at the website I've set up:
http://www.activedisassembly.com/suziechiodo/final_assignment/travel_frameset.html

Highlights of my trip included:

- Being snowed on in 3 countries and 2 continents
- Skiing in the Pyrenees
- Seeing my family in Bristol (below) and helping out at my grandad's senior citizen's party
- Seeing my work on the website of a British national newspaper
- Being nursed back to health by my honorary Turkish family after a nasty bout of stomach flu
- Watching the Northern Lights from our plane on the way back to Canada

My sis for Christmas

2007-01-08T10:39:00.000-05:00

Christmas rocked - not only did it snow (very briefly!) but my sister came over for a week and we did fun things like opening stockings and sightseeing in Toronto - here's some pics (sorry if they're a bit jumbled - nightmares with layout is one of the joys of Blogger):

Me and Tammy after opening our stockings on Christmas day : )

And our stockings hanging by the fireplace - awww... (Joe was asleep, if you were wondering where he was)

Then we spent the rest of Christmas with Joe's family - here we are at the obligatory massive meal...

...and Joe and me opening pressies from my brother and his fiancee...

Later on that week, Tammy and I went up the CN Tower, Toronto's big pointy building (and, apparently, the tallest freestanding structure in the world...how interesting...)

Tam at the top of the tower (check out the view!)

Me about to step off the precipice (nah, not really - this is the faux scary 'glass floor' of the Tower)

Me and Tammy having lunch at St Lawrence Market - probably one of the best food markets in the world (veal parmigiana sandwich...mmm...)

And finally, Joe and Tammy with my Canadian friend Tammy (and the two Tammies liked each other! Yay!)

Canadian Idiot

2006-11-23T19:57:00.000-05:00

Weird Al Yankovic is nowhere near as good as he used to be, but anything lampooning Canadians is funny so check out his latest effort: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHK1gxH23gU

Actually, as I've said a million times before, I love Canada and everything in it (within reason). But it's just not home. Every single member of my family is in England (apart from my dad who's in France - but you get my drift) and I'm here, and I'm getting just a little bit sick of it. Now I've found out my grandad is seriously ill - which makes my plan to come back in January a little bit more concrete. And my sister's coming here for Christmas, which (a) rocks and (b) should tide me over in the family department. I just have to get through the next month...

Climb every mountain

2006-11-16T17:02:00.000-05:00

One new (or rediscovered) sport wasn't enough for me last week, so when my friend Tammy invited me to go rock climbing I gladly accepted. Not that I'd ever climbed before - even if I'd had the opportunity I would have avoided it because I hate heights.

Sure enough, I had a few shaky moments climbing the first wall - in fact, the worst part was getting to the top and having to let go so I could be lowered down on the rope I was attached to (see last photo, below). Even the pros are attached to ropes, and you have to let go of the wall completely to get lowered down.

But by the end of the evening I was scaling the highest walls (35ft) and looking down (without fear!) to listen to people's advice. You see, rock climbing is very strategic and if you get the wrong hand or foothold (the feet are the most important) it can mess up a whole section of climb. So other people yell Twister-like instructions at you ('Right hand red!' or 'Left foot blue!') so you get the right holds and make it up the wall.

And when you get to the top, it's the hugest adrenalin rush. Then your arms start shaking because it takes such enormous physical effort. You should see some of the climbers - they have arms like Madonna and backs like Patrick Swayze (and that's just the girls). I don't know about the back, but it would be fun to have muscly arms. Plus it's great exercise in general and you meet lots of new people - so, along with the ice hockey (which I did again on Monday) I think this could be a regular thing.

What about the triple citizens?

2006-11-07T16:36:00.000-05:00

Today's Canadian headlines said that Ottawa is thinking of changing the law allowing people to hold dual citizenship. This is in the wake of the Lebanese war in the summer, where 15,000 Lebanese-Canadians escaped to Canada having lived away from the country for years, and are now happily claiming social benefits.

A lot of Canadians, naturally, think this is unfair. But what about those of us who do live in Canada, but just don't want to sever ties with the place where we were born (in my case, America) and raised (in my case, England)? The American passport is just very handy - I don't really want to live there, just visit without hassle - but my family's English and I go back there all the time. Heck, my identity is English! (sort of)

But I want to live in Canada, so I also want a Canadian passport. It looks like, somewhere down the line, I might have to choose. That's not something I'm looking forward to.

For more details, follow this link: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/11/07/dual-citizenship.html

Ice hockey, at last

2006-11-06T16:48:00.000-05:00

Finally, a year and a half after arriving in the country, I've got round to playing ice hockey!! I hadn't played for about six years (ever since I played for Oxford - I still remember drinking champagne out of the trophy after we thrashed Cambridge : ) until yesterday, when I bravely stepped out onto my local ice rink in my brand new skates. New skates, newly sharpened blades, new ice - all these things made me a little bit wobbly.

But I got used to it, and 45 minutes later I was (a) coasting around the rink pretty confidently, and (b) bored. You see, ice skating on its own doesn't do too much for me. Everyone else at the skating session (all six of them) were chatting to each other, and I wondered how anyone got to know each other if all they did was skate in circles. So I stopped, just to see what would happen. Sure enough, someone skated up to me and introduced themselves! And then she introduced me to everyone else!

And guess what? One of them was English! And not 80 (like most of the English people around here)!! He's a bit of a thesp and works in showbiz so we hit it off straight away. He'd barely known me for 10 minutes when he invited me and Joe over for dinner, so culture-wise he's obviously not completely English. But he'd lived in London for years so we had lots to talk about.

When he discovered I'd played ice hockey for Oxford, he immediately went off and got a couple of sticks and a puck. Up till then I still wasn't completely confident, but as soon as I got a stick in my hand it was like I'd never stopped playing. Wielding a large object to hit things with comes very naturally to me, which I probably should be slightly worried about. Nah, not really. I'm just chuffed I've found new friends and a fun way to exercise. So guess what I'll be doing every Monday morning from now on?

Hung like an Ikea photo frame

2006-11-04T15:49:00.000-05:00

I have to get myself more attached to the grapevine...this Ikea cock-up (tee-hee) has been doing the rounds since the end of August, but I've only just heard about it. Oh well - I still think it's hilarious. What's wrong with this picture on page 2 of the Ikea catalogue? Answers to the 'comments' section, the winner gets an honourable mention in the next entry (so to speak).

It's the 21st century - time for another haircut

2006-11-03T17:59:00.000-05:00

I get my hair cut so infrequently I should, by all rights, look like Cousin It off the Addams Family. Instead, it goes all frizzy and split-endsy and I end up throwing back in a plait and forgetting about it. Then the frumpiness gets too much (even for me) and off I go to the scissor-man.

That's what I did today, using up the last of a gift certificate that Joe gave me a year and a half ago (yes, really - that's when I last got my hair cut). The hairdresser didn't bitch about what poor condition my hair was in - in fact, he said it was great for the length. He even liked my fringe. I think it was all genuine and not just for the tip, but I did my part and tipped generously anyway. It's the Canadian way (a lesson for Brits in the hospitality industry - can you spell 'customer service'? You could probably spell it better if everyone else knew how to spell 'tip').

Then I was in a self-pampering mood so I went shopping. Coming out of the mall, though, I realised I'd lost my car. Mall parking lots are so huge that you can wander round for days and not find where you parked. After walking for 15 minutes in the freezing cold I started imagining the headlines ('Budding Journalist Freezes to Death in Parking Lot Horror' - Suzie Chiodo was discovered dead metres from her Chevy Metro. Forensic pathologists, constructing her final moments, believe she died cursing the very mall where she'd just purchased a fabulous v-neck sweater dress and washed out hipster jeans for only 35 pounds).

When I finally found Silver (don't tell me you've never named your car) I was so pleased I hugged him. I guess that's the precise opposite of being a tree-hugger, but I've never been that glad to see a tree.

And now I get to go out with my fab hair and fab clothes and enjoy a brief moment of looking completely presentable. It might even last a few days.

(By the way, the photos for this entry were taken with the camera on my funky new Apple Macbook. Now I can work wherever I want - and take silly photos of stuff. Yay!!)

Halloween

2006-11-01T17:25:00.000-05:00

Another season, another celebration - such is Canadian life. With autumn/fall, everyone starts decorating their houses with apples and pumpkins and leaves in red, yellow and orange. Kids go on hayrides and wander around in cornstalk mazes. Radio and TV ads start using lame Halloween puns ('It's spook-tacular!') and the shops are crammed with sweets in every conceivable shape and colour (including fingers and skulls oozing black goo that should come with the number of the nearest Poison Control Centre).

A couple of weeks later, Halloween arrives and everyone (including the adults) dresses up. This is the part I love. Hands up the number of people I know in England who would dress up, ever (I can see my sister's hand going up, and Milton's, and everyone's in my accapella group). I can basically count them on one hand. Here, you're considered a stick-in-the-mud if you don't at least put on a funny hat. I went as Batgirl, which was a great excuse to wear PVC : )

Then there's the trick-or-treaters. All the kids go around their neighbourhood getting candy from everyone, and all the neighbours chat to each other and the adults tell the kids how cute they are before giving them unfathomable amounts of E numbers. One of my friends even got cookies that looked like fingers (with almonds for fingernails - how cool??).

It's all good fun, and even the Christians join in rather than condemning people to another night in front of the TV because the whole thing is occult and you'll probably get psychos putting razors in your apples anyway. They realise it's a chance for fun and togetherness just like any other celebration (the mummy in the photo is my friend Nina, who's married to my pastor : ) I love this country!

Some other great costumes, by the way...

My friend Steve as Michael Jackson in 'Thriller'

Steve's mum as Dolly Parton (note the knockers)

My best friend Tammy (left) as a gypsy and Steve's sister Lindsey as a pirate

Media musings

2006-10-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

Being a full-time writer is the best thing ever and I'm loving every minute of it, but it's funny - journalism is like magic. When you become a magician and you learn all the tricks, you can't enjoy them any more because you know the secret. It's the same when I watch a documentary or read an article. I'm able to see through all the drama and hype and meaningless hyperbole and see the bare facts - which often aren't very impressive.

That's why you need the drama. Example - I was watching a documentary on catching this crocodile in Burundi, and it involved lots of infra-red footage of the croc checking out the trap. Pretty boring - until you add Jaws music and comments like 'an eye flickers in the distance' (um - yes, I can see that).

The other day I was listening to the showbiz goss on the radio, and it ended with "That's the latest from Hollywood - and remember, we had it first." Er, no - I think the wire services had it first. Every media organisation willing to pay receives those 24/7 - it's hardly an exclusive.

Even reading a basic newspaper article only takes me a couple of seconds now. I scan it, get the info I need, ignore the window dressing ('through their hijabs you could only see their eyes. And their tears') and move on. It certainly saves time.

On the other hand, working in journalism has also given me more of an appreciation of good writing. You can read a sentence and think 'wow - that's pithy', or 'great use of humour'. I read a piece the other day where the writer travelled back in time to his childhood halfway through the article, then returned to the present at the end of it. It was so seamless and well done, the literary equivalent of the screen going misty and an echoey voice saying 'It all seems like yesterday'.

This is why I'm don't like overuse of drama. If it's a good story, you don't need it. If it's crap story, you shouldn't be writing it in the first place. Unfortunately, drama always sells, so lines like the hijab one above (which I didn't make up) will always be on the front page. I guess I'll just maintain my moral superiority from the lofty heights of page 20.

Living in England

2006-09-23T07:06:00.000-05:00

This three-week holiday hasn't quite turned out how I expected, but that's not a bad thing. I was meant to go and see my dad in France on September 10, then missed the flight, then ended up getting another one on September 11 (great day to fly!).

Then I was meant to be going to Turkey to see the people I used to teach English to. But I got a call just over a week ago from the assistant to the managing editor of the Daily Mail (a national newspaper here), saying "We'd like you to come in on Monday for two weeks' work experience." So I did. And Turkey has been put on hold till next year.

The work experience thing isn't as random as it sounds. A couple of weeks before I left for England, I sent my aunt my CV and a covering letter to pass on to someone my uncle knows in the Associated Newspapers. Then I forgot all about it until I got the phone call.

So now I've been there a week, and *drum roll* I was published on Wednesday!! Yep - my writing, and byline, appeared on page 27 of the Daily Mail. Another notch on the journalistic bedpost. The whole of next week I'm in the travel section, which I'm really looking forward to. Then it's home to carry on living normal life, whatever that is.

It's weird - I've only been in England 2 weeks, but living in one place and working 9-5 and seeing all my old friends means I feel like I live here again. The only thing missing is Joe. And thinking about everyday life back in Canada, about the people at the shelter and friends from church, is decidedly weird. It almost feels like I had a dream about Canada and now I'm waking up.

But hey - it's either culture shock or staying in one place - and I know which one I'd rather do.

Pop the Champagne

2006-08-31T10:44:00.000-05:00

Driving to work this morning I saw a van with "Schindler Elevators" written on the side. Someone missed a great opportunity to call their company Schindler's Lifts.

Anyway, random thoughts aside, I've been busy with yet another project lately. Not blogging (that's been a little neglected), not even writing articles (although I have been working on a few - see my website under About/About the Editor/Portfolio - there's new stuff under Beacon Magazine and Niagara This Week), but writing a book.

Yesireebob! The youth shelter where I work has been going for over 20 years, and the founder wants to write a book about how the place was set up and all the stuff that's happened there over the years. It's a Christian organization (but not in-your-face or pushy about it) and the focus of the book will be how youth have been helped and everything God has done.

So I'm interviewing the founder once a week (who's also contributing some of the writing) and doing a chapter on the basis of each interview. We've signed a contract and I've already written two chapters. Hopefully, by March, we'll have a first draft!

I'm even getting paid to write it (my hours and pay from reception will be transferred to working on the book). Plus there's royalties (but I'm not holding my breath on that one). So, ladies and gents, I am now (or will be when the book is finished, but I'm too excited to wait till then) an Official Author!

This is something I've wanted to be ever since I was able to use a pen (in fact, when I was a young child I even wrote little books in pencil - like 'Bowtie's Birthday', pictured right along with 'The Deer' and 'The Rabbit'). So it's a dream come true! : ))))

Update on the last...er, 6 weeks

2006-08-16T16:30:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, I know, it's been ages. But I have good excuses, really. Like the fact that it's summer and I have far better things to do than sit in front of the computer (more on that later). And the 2 other blogs I now have going, which also demand constant input (links are on the right - one reflects my humanitarian impulses, the other reflects my lets-get-out-of-here-and-explore-the-other-side-of-the-world impulses). So, summer activities...

Port Dover

This is a fun seaside town about 45 minutes drive away from us. It's on Lake Erie, which is clean and sparkling, as opposed to Lake Ontario which is a sewer. I went with my friends Lindsay, Tammy and Steve (L-R in photo) and we had the biggest laugh ever. Day trips in Canada are so fun - no traffic, no rain, spots on even the most popular beaches, warm water to swim in, and the really popular ice cream joints still offer really quick service at reasonable prices. I love this place!

Hanging with the hippies

Joe and I went to a conference held on an organic farm (which doubles as a Christian commune - dude. Here's a photo, complete with solar panels on the roof). All the seminars were on organic farming (funny that) as well as fair trade, eco-tourism, sustainable living, stuff like that. Not only was it gorgeous weather and brilliant fun, we also met quite a few characters that weren't all hippies. Some of them were Amish. Or Goth. Yes, it was quite a collection of people.

Plus we stayed in a beautiful B&B that was on a lovely sparkling river, incredibly comfy beds, friendly hosts, and a massive slap-up breakfast for only 40 pounds a night (for both of us)! Did I mention that I love this place?

(Right: the owners of the B&B standing by their garden shed. They were definitely hippies).

AIDS-mania hits Toronto

Well, I guess it's a bit tasteless to describe it as 'AIDS-mania', but HIV/AIDS is definitely the humanitarian concern of the moment. There's an international conference going on right now (I'm hoping it's been in the news over there in England - otherwise someone's not doing their job on the PR front), and World Vision has reconstructed an African village (left) in the middle of the city, which you can tour and find out the stories of AIDS orphans. I went to the World Vision thing (tickets to the conference were sold out months ago) and it was definitely worth it. More on my AIDS Africa blog.

Incidentally, I started the blog before all the media frenzy over the conference. Just to point out that I'm not just being trendy - I genuinely think it's a cause that needs our cash and attention.

I'm a mad cow

I tried being especially worthy and going to donate blood, but I hit a little obstacle. Well, a big one actually - I can never ever donate blood in Canada. Ever. Guess why??

Because I lived in England between 1980 and 1996, I may have become infected with Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease, or the human version of BSE. So my blood might be tainted.

I guess they have a point (if an infinitesimally small one), but honestly - I try and do my bit for Canada, and I'm told my blood's tainted because I lived in England. Joe said he already knew I was a mad cow (thanks hubby).

Anyway, I still took a biscuit on the way out because (a) that's half the reason I went (you give blood, you get biscuits - everyone knows that), and (b) I deserved it. After all, I am Napoleon. Moo.

Forza Italia!

2006-07-09T15:48:00.000-05:00

Yay - we won!!! Okay, so I'm not really Italian...but I did live there for 4 years and started speaking Italian the same time I started speaking English, so there's a fairly good reason to support them.

Although it was kind of a hollow victory - penalty kicks are pure luck. Oh well.

So here's a nice bit of Verdi to celebrate the Italian win - 'Nessun Dorma' performed by Pavarotti. Perfetto!

I itch

2006-07-08T12:10:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me why. In the last 48 hours, something like razor burn has appeared on my legs (I say 'something like' because I don't think it actually is razor burn - I'd shaved over two days before it appeared).

It's very very itchy, and surprisingly distracting. I have to force myself to do other stuff so I don't think about scratching, although as time wears on I'm becoming more and more disciplined. I have this cream (best described as Novocaine for your skin) which provides temporary relief, but the doctor isn't open till Monday. It's gonna be a long weekend.

But on the up side - I've found a site where you can get html for downloadable songs on your blog (5 years ago I wouldn't have had a clue what that last sentence meant - I love technology)!!
My very favourite song for several months has been 'Bring me to life' by Evanescence, which I've even sung on karaoke (don't knock it till you've heard it!). So here it is. Enjoy : )

Front page, baby!

2006-07-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

Woohoo! Check me out on the front page of the Hamilton Spectator yesterday!
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=1014656316146&c=Article&cid=1151617838242

You can also read my other two articles that were printed last Thursday (mentioned in my previous entry):
Punjabi Sister Act: http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1151531413730&call_pageid=1024322466723
Leadership Course Gives Women Confidence (complete with lame photo of me): http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1151531413934&call_pageid=1024322466723

Three articles in a week!! A complete fluke or a sign that my journalism career is actually taking off? It remains to be seen...

Tribunes and Tribulations

2006-06-29T12:11:00.000-05:00

The good news: I got a job interview!
The bad news: I didn't get the job.
The good news: The interview was at a newspaper called the Welland Tribune, which gave me a great title for this entry.
The good news: I won't have to travel hours to work and back every day.
The good news: I won't have to write articles on 'cowpat bingo' and other stories I read in recent editions.
The good news: I can still write whatever I want for whoever I like.
The bad news: Okay, maybe not for whoever I like - the Globe and Mail isn't exactly banging down my door - but freelancing does give me a certain kind of freedom and I'm getting lots of work at the moment, so I'm staying positive.

I've been doing a lot with the Hamilton Spectator lately - I was in the paper twice today, and I'll be in there tomorrow too - which has been fun and really varied. It would be nice if this much work kept coming in, but I have lots of other irons in the fire too.

If you want to check out today's articles, you can find them at www.thespec.com (search by date - June 29). More on the other stuff I'm doing when it's actually published!

Flying high, feeling low

2006-06-20T17:06:00.000-05:00

Last weekend got off to a great start - Joe's company was having its annual picnic in a town about 2 hours' drive from where we live. But Joe decided I was too good for the bus, and paid one of his friends to fly me there in their private plane!! So, on a Friday afternoon in glorious sunshine, I found myself hovering 4000 feet above the Niagara peninsula. I even caught a glimpse of my house : )

After reaching my destination, I waited for Joe in the airport bar which was only for private plane owners and seriously posh. My drink was free. I felt like a princess!

The next day was the company picnic, when we sashayed around Joe's boss's multi-acre property, having a dip in the pool, go-karting on his private race-track and admiring his ridiculously extensive collection of exotic cars (including a cherry red Lamborghini Diabolo, pictured below, which I had to stop Joe from drooling over).

So all in all, a reasonable start to the weekend. But then we got home at midnight to an answer machine message telling me I hadn't got the part in 'My Fair Lady'. I know!! Not that I think I should have got the part purely on the basis of my English accent, but I was one of the better ones auditioning so it should at least have tipped the balance! What a rip-off.

I'm not even that bothered about the part. What I am bothered about is the rejection. It would be great to get accepted for something - a full-time journalism job would be ideal - so I can stop wasting away the days with little bits of work. The freelance stuff is great for the time being, but I've been doing it for a year now and I'd kind of like the time being to come to an end.

It's worse when Joe's family ask me if I have a job yet (apparently, freelancing and working reception don't count). Wouldn't I tell them if I had a job? Wouldn't I call them, squealing for joy down the phone? Why on earth do they feel like they have to ask me??

Joe's grandma did just that when we were in the hospital on Sunday visiting Joe's grandfather (although, to be fair, she has a lot on her mind). After a bout of shingles and a fever, he's on a steep downward spiral into dementia. Six weeks ago he was fine (here he is at Easter, nearest the camera), and now he looks at me with the deepest suspicion and confusion.

What was more depressing was the guy on the other side of the room. His whole family was there as the priest read him his last rites, after which he was pronounced brain dead. The family carried on talking as the man lay there, colour flowing out of his cheeks and mouth agape like a giant sarcophagus. I couldn't stop looking at him. The guy was dead. Memories of my mum made my heart throb like an old wound.

In the meantime, Joe's grandma continued giving me advice on finding a job. I walked out of the room just as my eyes started to overflow.

Now it's Tuesday, and after a couple of good nights' sleep I'm feeling a lot better. Life might be frustrating and uncertain, but overall I'm incredibly lucky. And who knows what the next few months will bring?

It's been a while

2006-06-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

The trouble with blogging is that when you actually have something to write about, you haven't got the time to write it. Anyway, in the last few weeks I've been to England and France (photos to follow) and applied for lots and lots of jobs. I haven't heard back from a single one.

I've also been doing an article for the Spectator on how people who've trained outside Canada can't get jobs here. Kind of ironic, really. But at least it's showed me how easy I have it compared to some. The photographer I've been working with has shot riots in Pakistan, photographed Tony Blair and President Musharraf, and worked with international press agencies, and he can't get a job with the local paper taking photos of pets and schoolkids. So I'm not holding out much hope - but I'm doing a web design course as a backup, so I guess it's not the end of the world.

Plus tonight I'm auditioning for My Fair Lady - seeing as I'll be the only one (hopefully) with an English accent, my hopes are high! Watch this space!

Bored of the flies

2006-04-21T06:05:00.000-05:00

I was driving home to Grimsby the other day when I noticed a patch of smog on the horizon. Hideous brown skidmarks across the sky are a familiar sight in Hamilton, where steel factories fill the air with nitrates, but not in Grimsby. "That's strange," I thought.

Then I began noticing little black clouds everywhere. Often they were long and thin, like steam escaping from fissures in the ground. Weird. Then I noticed some coming from nearby bushes as I drove past. So I stopped to take a closer look - and then I realised. The clouds weren't steam. They weren't smog.

They were flies. Millions and millions of them.

For some reason, every living insect on earth feels the need to migrate to Grimsby each April and congregate in large swarms. They turn white walls black. They cover windows like curtains. They threaten to fly down your windpipe every time you open your mouth. Ew.

This is something the estate agent conveniently forgot to tell us. I can only hope they're like mayflies and die off in a few weeks.

Anyway, let's end on a more pleasant note. I had another great Easter with my Italian family, and my nieces and nephews weren't around for most of the day so it was also nice and quiet. Here's a pic:

Hope yours was just as good!

"We don't like their sound"

2006-04-12T17:06:00.000-05:00

On a rainy morning in 1962, four young men walked into the Decca Records studio in London and played their hearts out. They failed the audition. In saying why he chose to sign Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead, a Decca executive said of the band:

"We don't like their sound and guitar bands are on their way out."

The band in question was the Beatles. They went on to redesign the world of pop music, while most people are hard pressed to name one Tremeloes song.

A couple of weeks ago, having had an interview with the Spectator, I was also told I'd failed the audition. But now the immediate reaction (a mixture of mild depression and bitter tirades) has passed, I'm actually pretty excited. Nobody in a 10 hour a day job has time to innovate on ways to reach people or think up extraordinary story ideas. But I do.

And I can. With my own website, a camera that does photos and movies, an address book full of contacts and endless ideas, I can go anywhere. My only limit is the amount of effort I'm willing to put in.

Speaking of my website, I'll be appearing on TV Sunday evening as the editor of northernexposuremagazine.ca

The word is spreading!!

The way of the street

2006-03-29T16:33:00.000-05:00

One of the most interesting parts of work at the shelter is when the youth forget I'm around and start talking like they would on the street. This mostly happens at reception, but it's also part of taking names at the door when the youth go into breakfast. Everyone will stand on the porch and have a smoke and forget about the clipboard-wielding staff member two feet away from them.

The other day a girl was talking about her ex-boyfriend. She'd only dumped him a couple of days previously and was telling her friends why. She didn't have to say anything - she just showed everyone the bruises, burns and bite marks all over her.

The general reaction showed some interesting things about street culture. Here are a few of them:

Vigilantism: No-one suggested going to the cops, and the girl would probably never consider it. Street youth do not trust the police, it’s as simple as that. There are various reasons for this: distrust of authority after parents and teachers have abused them or let them down; cynicism after cops have failed to protect them in the past; and hatred of policemen who have stopped them doing things they see as necessary to survive, like taking drugs, sleeping rough or stealing.

So street youth operate their own justice system, where groups of friends look out for each other. They will often wage ‘war’ on other groups when the conflict was initially just between two people. And some illegal acts are seen as more illegal than others.

Values: What acts would they be? It’s okay to do what you need to do to ‘get by’ (see above), although stealing from another street youth often causes trouble. But other things, like wife-beating in the example I used, are unacceptable. If the girl’s friends find her ex-boyfriend, they’ll beat the living daylights out of him. Other heinous crimes include rape and child molestation. One guy I knew had a rumour spread about him that he was a ‘diddler’ (child molester) and as a result a gang of youth were trying to find him to beat him up. Being a ‘diddler’ or ‘goof’ is the worst of the worst, much like it is in prison.

Drama: Pretty much everything that happens on the street is all about the drama. Conflicts escalate like wildfire because bored youth will take sides – so a one-on-one conflict will turn into gang warfare within ten minutes (see ‘vigilantism’). Gossip is rampant – a fight broke out near reception the other day and youth were still talking about it two days later. Even if nothing particularly dramatic is going on, street youth are still in drama mode because that’s all they’ve known in lives full of abuse and pain. So in order to stay in that mode, and keep things constant in their transitory lives, they’ll blow situations out of proportion. It also brings the attention many of them crave.

All these things are useful to remember when coming across street youth – whether you read about them, see them or work with them. In many ways, it’s a completely different culture. And although it’s tempting to judge people because, for example, they don’t see stealing as wrong, we should approach street culture in the way we’d approach any culture – with love for the people and a desire to understand them.

Death and taxes (I know which one I'd prefer!)

2006-03-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

Having ranted about Canada in my last post, I think I should point out that there are some good things about living in England. A big one is the tax system. In England, if you work for someone, they do all your taxes for you! Whereas in Canada, you have to file taxes no matter who you are.

If you’re self-employed, you have triple the workload. The deadline for filing taxes in Canada is fast approaching, and everyone is showing the strain. Joe has it the worst – a business in the UK, a business in Canada, and additional income in both countries. And it all has to be declared on his Canadian taxes. I was up until past midnight last night helping him, and today he’s going to the accountant. With any luck, it’ll all be over soon.

So Canada isn’t quite as idyllic as I might have made it sound. People’s use of words and grammar sometimes annoys me too (although England is no different). Often they pose a downright communication barrier. For example, a ‘skank’ in Canada is a slut. But in England, ‘skanky’ just means generally gross or dirty. So when I said I was feeling skanky after cleaning at the Rock the other day, my co-worker gave me a very odd look.

Here’s another one. The same co-worker said the other day rubbed her stomach and said she felt ravished. I thought ‘Really?? How unfortunate for you.’ The word ‘ravish’ means ‘to rape’. I think she meant ravenous. So many people have made this mistake I’ve stopped correcting it.

But these are minor irritations in an otherwise perfect life. It’ll take a lot more than that to get me to move back to England!

A spring in my step

2006-03-21T14:35:00.000-05:00

My accent is a huge conversation starter. Whenever I meet anyone – even if it’s a sales assistant or a bank clerk – they ask me where I’m from. The next question is usually: how do you like Canada?

My answer is always the same: I love it!

People are always slightly surprised by this. How could I not miss England, with its fabulous old buildings, historic monuments and green rolling hills? Where every comment is laced with intelligence and wit? Where culture-crammed Europe is only a short step away?

[Right: Buckingham Palace - it costs a couple of million dollars for an apartment anywhere near it]

Without being too negative, here’s how I don’t miss it: we have to live in those ‘fabulous’ old buildings, where you spend a fortune trying to heat the place and you’re still chilled to the bone. The green rolling hills are quickly being overtaken by housing estates. Yes, Oscar Wilde and John Cleese are hilarious, but they’re vastly outnumbered by the hordes of mumbling Neanderthals whose smartest comment is “whatchoo lookin’ at?” before beating you up because you don’t support their team.

[Above: One of my countrymen. How embarrassing.]

History and culture abound, and I do miss being able to take dirt cheap flights to Europe, but that stuff is nothing compared to life in Canada.

The lifestyle we have here would be just a dream in England. We have a beautiful house here, with a huge yard and a pool. We have two cars. I live about 30 kilometres (about 22 miles) from work and it only takes me 25 minutes to get there. The town where we live has the stunning Niagara Escarpment on one side and Lake Ontario on the other [pictured right], yet all the nightlife we need is within a 30 minute radius. My parents in law own a cottage on a lake, as do a lot of Canadians. A few hours’ drive takes us to the middle of absolutely nowhere with species of animal that some English people don’t even know exist.

And the sun shines almost all the time. I can’t tell you how refreshing this is after years of living in endless drizzle.

Sure, Canada has its share of Neanderthals, and south-western Ontario is starting to resemble a giant parking lot. But when I drive to work through blazing sunshine and constantly encounter open, friendly and optimistic people (at least, more than I ever did in England), I can’t help feeling like I’ve won the lottery. So my answer will always be the same: I love it here.

As Seen on TV

2006-03-03T19:14:00.000-05:00

I seem to have a cold again for the second time in a month (I'm guessing it's from all the germs going around in the homeless shelter), but today needed a quick blog at least.

A few weeks ago I sent my CV to this guy who has his own TV show - he replied saying they didn't need any researchers, but they did need guests. Did I want to go on the show?

So, buoyed up on tylenol (Canadian paracetamol), ginseng and caffeine, I made my first appearance on Canadian TV today! The show was called 'Behind the Story', on current affairs/faith and ethics in journalism: http://www.ctstv.com/behindthestory.shtml It's supposed to be an hour long but filming seemed to take five minutes and I hardly got a word in - but the words I did get in were fairly intelligent, and I looked great! Success!

Of course the whole point of going on the show was to network - but one person was from the Spectator (my foot's already in that door) and the other, from the Toronto Star, wasn't in the slightest bit interested in my work. Hm. Oh well, hopefully when I contact people now they'll remember me from TV. Today regional TV, tomorrow... um... a paid journalism job! It would be nice, anyway.

One last thing - I've updated my website for the first time in ages, so check it out: www.northernexposuremagazine.ca

The Year in Review

2006-02-11T23:55:00.000-05:00

Well, can't let today go by without a quick blog. Why? Because I'VE BEEN HERE A YEAR! That's right, folks, a year ago today I was touching down on Canadian soil and wondering what on earth lay ahead of me. Now I know. It's been a pretty busy year:

- I've become a Permanent Resident of Canada
- I've learnt to drive on the right hand side of the road
- I've had a front page headline in one of the biggest newspapers in Ontario, and the biggest in the Niagara region
- I’ve joined a fantastic church and made loads of friends there
- I’ve done a musical
- I’ve hiked up one of the biggest mountains on America’s eastern seaboard
- I’ve done a 10km run for cancer
- I’ve freelanced for two newspapers and a magazine
- I’ve bought a house
- I’ve bought a car
- I’ve worked in a homeless shelter

Hm – and here I was thinking I hadn’t achieved anything. Hooray! Moving to Canada was the best thing I ever did, except for the part about leaving my family and friends behind. Yep, I still miss you guys…

Big news and little sleep

2006-01-23T23:30:00.000-05:00

I can finally see the attraction in watching people like Jon Snow and getting the election results as they happen. The Hamilton Spectator sent me out to cover a story about Canada's general election (there were two journalism interns waiting around who I beat to the story - yes!) and even as I was writing it up, I could hear cheers from the TVs in the newsroom as the voting results came in. This country hasn't had a Conservative government in 13 years, and now it looks like it's going to get one. It's a mini revolution, and I got to report on it!

So I get six hours' sleep tonight before going to the breakfast program at the shelter tomorrow, so I'm wired on diet Coke, so my stomach is rumbling after missing out on the free pizza because I was out interviewing people. So what? The really important thing is - something historical happened. And I was part of it.

I love journalism!

Burning down the house

2006-01-20T18:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I said that working at the shelter was very far from boring - and today was a great example. Reception was pretty quiet except for a cop sitting there waiting to talk to one of the staff. He disappeared for two seconds, and while he was gone one of the homeless guys ran into reception, hurriedly picked up all his stuff, and legged it outside! It didn't take me long to figure out he's wanted by the cops, but I don't really want to know what for.

I was just pondering this when two other street kids (I say 'kids', but they're all in their late teens and early twenties) ran in and shouted "Fire!" Sure enough, the back alley was filled with smoke because someone set fire to our endless mound of garbage. I was just paging everyone with a fire extinguisher to the back door, when I was told we had to evacuate the building! So half my morning was spent listening to firemen complain about our garbage problem while they tried to extinguish the blaze.

And the thing is, I've just put two and two together. The kid in the first paragraph running from the cops? Prime suspect - his nickname is Pyro.

New Year, new everything

2006-01-19T15:36:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm glad to say that Christmas in Canada was everything I thought it would be - eating vast amounts of food with a (almost embarrassingly) generous Italian family, friends, parties, and, at the very last minute, snow. Yes, it was a white Christmas!!

The only thing that tainted the whole thing was the commercialism. I know, that's what everyone says, but they haven't been to North America. I mean, the sheer amount of advertising and sales and ten more shopping days and buybuybuybuybuybuybuybuy! Not to mention the forest of fliers you have to throw away every time you get a newspaper. It's enough to make you turn Amish. Anyway, it was all great fun and when January came I started getting into the swing of my new job.

Helter-shelter

Well, it's not strictly new. I've been working at the shelter since July now, and getting a pay packet (aka a mound of pennies) since September. But now I'm doing five mornings a week! On reception! Yessir, all the craziness, hilarity, stress, warm fuzzy feelings, confusion and disorganisation of a homeless shelter - and I'm at the forefront.

It's definitely not boring. My morning is joyous or nightmarish purely on the basis of the people who come in. They can be demanding and rude - one guy sat in reception for my entire shift waiting for his welfare cheque. I told him the mail would arrive at 11.30, but he still sat there going: "When's the mail coming? Don't you guys know your job? Where’s the mail? If my cheque doesn’t come today I’m punching a hole in the wall.” He did this for four days straight. When the cheque finally arrived, I almost kissed it (needless to say, we haven’t seen him since).

But there are other people who I can chat and laugh with, who make the morning seem an hour long. Like the guy who gave up crack (I’ve mentioned him before) who now has a job but still comes in to say hi and show me some of the kung fu moves he’s learned. Or quoting Shakespeare with the girl who, like me, played Juliet in school. Or bursting into a rendition of ‘Money for Nothing’ with a guy after Dire Straits came up in the conversation. Or showing off how many languages we can swear in. It is so not your average reception job.

Almost in demand

And then in the afternoons I’m doing my freelance journalism, which now consists of two papers (Hamilton Spectator and Grimsby News) and a magazine (the Beacon – a better quality Christian mag).

I’ve been writing or interviewing almost every day for the last two weeks. The Spectator has commissioned me to cover the citizenship court (where people become Canadian citizens – I have to interview people about where they came from and how they settled in) every two weeks indefinitely. And yesterday they called me to ask if I could work for them next Monday to help cover the national elections!

Plus I’ve come across quite a few contacts through my constant interviewing, so I have to send my CV off and call people and try and land a job. It really feels like things are starting to get somewhere.

Bumping into the neighbours

We’ve even started getting to know our neighbours (finally!). I was about to pull off down the road last Sunday, when my neighbour across the street reversed out of her driveway straight into me. The only thing vaguely hurt was my nerves (I kind of went a bit hysterical…me? Overreact? Surely not), but we still had to sort out the insurance so Joe and I went to her house. Her husband peered at us through his hangover and reacted to the news like a bear that’s been shot with a pellet gun, but he soon warmed up and we ended up laughing about it over a cooked breakfast. Hooray!

And, as a pretty cool epilogue, the insurance company agreed it wasn’t my fault and provided me with a very funky Toyota Yaris while my car’s being fixed! I’ve never driven a practically new car before, and I have to say I’m hooked. It feels like I’m flying two feet above the tarmac, and I now I look for an excuse to drive anywhere. Driving never held any attraction for me until I came to Canada, but now I can go more than five minutes without coming to a red light, and with virtually no traffic jams or roundabouts, I love it! Just as well really – Grimsby’s out in the sticks, so almost everything is about half an hour away : )

Guys and Dolls

2005-12-15T22:29:00.000-05:00

Most of you know that I'm carrying on my thespian habits here in Canada, as I seem completely unable to stay off a stage for more than a year. The life of a luvvie, I suppose : )

Anyway, here's the photos of my first treading of the Canadian boards - as a Salvation Army band member with one line in Guys & Dolls...!

[Left: Me and my fellow band members, complete with evangelistic smiles : )]

[Right: Me and my South African friend Rinatha, shedding our holy image and enjoying a bevvie at the interval]

[Left: The scene in which I said my one line. Note the passion and sheer acting skill!! I'm the one on the far right, by the way]

Anyway, with my English accent, I should get a slightly bigger part in 'My Fair Lady' - I might even have a chance at the main part (if you squint really hard, I can pass for Audrey Hepburn - no really)!

By the way, if you've got five minutes to spare, you can also read my latest article:
http://thegrimsbylincolnnews.com/dec14_05/aaaGLNDec14Pages31-35.pdf Enjoy!

No more poker

2005-12-15T22:26:00.000-05:00

“Have you got any weapons on you?” This is one of the questions I sometimes ask when I man the door at the shelter. I asked one guy the other day because I knew the answer was yes. He always carries a knife on him – this is the same guy who stabbed someone in the hand during an armed robbery (see entry of August 18).

When he left, I handed the knife back, and half-jokingly asked him to wipe my fingerprints off it. Half-jokingly, because I half-know what he does with it. Just as I half-suspected his involvement in the recent spate of armed robberies in the city.

Every time I read a report of one of these robberies, I wondered if my poker buddy was involved. This morning’s newspaper told how two guys held up a store, threatening to kill the owner and almost killing his fourteen-year-old son who chased after them. Guess who one of them was.

Seeing as this guy is being charged with ten other robberies, I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. And of course he deserves jail. He probably deserves to get the crap kicked out of him by half the shop owners in the area. But I still can’t help thinking it’s such a waste. This is an intelligent and articulate person who’s made all the wrong choices. He could have got so far if he’d just made the right ones. And now he’ll be in prison for the best part of a year.

Anyway, this is just one of the many dramas I see every day, and I’m seeing more and more of them now I’m working five mornings a week as the shelter’s receptionist. It’s a lot of things, but boring is definitely not one of them.

I'm becoming one of them! Nooooo!

2005-12-08T13:03:00.000-05:00

'Them' being Canadians, that is. Becoming one of them isn't a bad thing in itself, but I do like being different to everyone else. It makes me feel...well...special.

Which is why I don't normally like hearing English accents when I'm in Canada, or bumping into English people, because then I feel diluted.

Yesterday was an exception though. We hung out with some friends of friends who've just come over from England for university (or 'school' as they call it here - no matter how old you are). The girl was from Essex so her English accent sounded even more English than mine (for some reason - I hope that doesn't mean I'm starting to sound Canadian).

The guy was hilarious - if somebody had asked me to draw a stereotypical English guy, I would have drawn him. He had one of those terrible shaggy 'haircuts', bad teeth, and a brown zip-up cardi. What is it with English twentysomething blokes and their brown zip-up cardies?? Is it supposed to be retro or cool or something? Sorry guys, but it doesn't work. You look like my grandad - and at least he wears cool hats.

Anyway, they were both fab people and it was great to be able to say what I wanted and be understood. I hadn't realised that I'd been subconsciously changing certain words just so I wouldn't have to repeat myself - things like 'trunk' (not boot), 'intersection' (not junction), 'shopping cart' (not shopping trolley) and 'gas' (not petrol). Within five minutes I was back to my English lingo again.

But the thing that made me think I was becoming Canadian was my reaction to something the guy said when I gave him a ride (not a lift!) home. He said his place was "Just over there, past the Tim Thorntons." Anyone even vaguely familiar with Canadian culture will know it's Tim Horton's (provider of coffee to 70% of the country - it's almost a monopoly).

I let out a peal of laughter and said: "That is so cute!" And I kept saying that until I realised Canadians had said that to me when I first arrived. Help!! The ironic thing is, I had absolutely no desire to keep my Englishness until I came to Canada. But now I'm 'the English one' and I never have to introduce myself twice, because I'm pretty much the only English one. I guess I'll just have to audition for 'My Fair Lady' next month, so I can not only keep my Englishness but also get a main part on the back of it.

Wouldn't that be loverly?

Winter at last

2005-11-24T15:08:00.000-05:00

Well, I say 'at last' in the sense that it usually comes earlier, not in the sense that I've been praying for it to come. But, anyway, here it is - the first snowfall of the year, scraping ice off my windshield (that's 'windscreen' to you English folks), and, eventually, shovelling the driveway.

Remember how I said that seasons change with astonishing speed in this country? There are 20 bags of leaves waiting for collection outside our house. I picked them up on Tuesday, when it was fall. Now they're covered in 2 inches of snow.

So it's completely freezing outside - and what better time to close an emergency shelter? That's right, from December 5th people aren't going to be able to sleep at our shelter any more, because of lack of funding. Good old Canadian government. Overnight accommodation is only one service the shelter offers, so I still have a job (so don't worry about me) but lots of people called the place home and now they have to go somewhere else. These other places (Salvation Army and others) also have older homeless people staying, who tend to be a very bad influence on the young people (teaching them how to panhandle and score cheap crack, I suppose).

So that's not good - although at least it'll make people look harder for permanent accommodation. It's out there, but it's also very hard for people from unstable backgrounds to hold down.

Anyway, talking of the Salvation Army (spot the tenuous link!), Guys and Dolls is going very well. We did a run last weekend, and there's two more weekends to go. As soon as I get photos of me in my uniform, I'll stick them here for all to see : ) And even though it seems to be taking over my life at the moment, I'm already looking at the next show. There's auditions in January for...wait for it...My Fair Lady!! Considering I'm probably the only person for miles around who can do posh and Cockney with any level of conviction, I'm definitely in with a chance. Now if only I can train my voice to hit a top A...

The only other thing to mention is my ongoing battle with newspaper editors. What is the point of being freelance and pitching stories if no-one ever responds to your ideas?? It just drains your motivation and self-respect after a while. Joe constantly tells me I have to sell myself, but my question is - what good is selling yourself when no-one will buy?

Long time no blog

2005-11-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

I just realised I haven't blogged for three weeks - time flies when you're crazily busy! Apologies to the regular readers, and thanks if you haven't given up yet.

Latest news...um...went for a job at the Hamilton Spectator and didn't get it...but that's ok because I'm still freelancing for them, plus writing the newsletter for the shelter and stuff for the Grimsby News...and every spare minute has been spent rehearsing for Guys and Dolls, which opens in 8 days.

I'm also helping the director of the shelter write a book - at the rate we're going, it should be published in, ooh, ten years. But it's still a good experience. To be honest, I've only been working there four months and I could write a book already.

Take Joe (no, not my husband Joe). He saw one of my articles in the Spectator the other day. The Spec is also doing a series on poverty at the moment, so he said:

"You should write about me. I've worn the same clothes for two months."

I should point out that this guy often embroiders the truth. But, to be honest, I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen him in different clothes. And he definitely sleeps in a bank machine every night (you know, where the hole in a wall is in a little room with a sliding door). This guy is seriously poor. Not that he has no income, it's just that he spends all of it on crack.

I keep trying to imagine what kind of life he must have had before he fell into the abyss. Probably not much of one - it's probably why he stepped over the edge in the first place. I was trying to persuade him to get a flu shot today, saying if he didn't get a shot, his health could get
much worse.

"I hope it does," was his only reply. This is one of the few guys in the shelter where I find it hard to see a glimmer of hope in his situation.

Karl is another one, a classic addict. He always claims he’s given up drinking, or pot, or magic mushrooms, but then finds an excuse to go back onto them. Here are some examples: “I quit drinking for eight days, which means I can probably do it every so often and it won’t cause any harm.” “I quit smoking pot.” “I took magic mushrooms and wrote the experience down, so I’ll know how bad it is and never do it again.” (He was back in hospital the next day). “I’m smoking pot because it helps me stay off the mushrooms.”

Another guy keeps coming in with pot and 'shroom hangovers, and I said I thought he'd given up drugs: "Nah, that was just the crack and stuff," he replied. Oh well - even giving up crack is an amazing achievement. I'd imagine the first smoke is like tripping into the Grand Canyon, and getting unhooked is like crawling back up with two broken legs.

So there's always a reason to be upbeat. Most of the people at the shelter are guys, and lately I've developed a maternal streak where I’ve been baking cookies for them and mending their stuff. One guy had a black shirt with a Lego logo on it which he thought (and I agreed) was distinctly uncool. He had a patch to cover it up, so I sewed it on for him. It wasn’t until he apologized for the pentagram and upside-down crosses on it that I even noticed what it was, but it really doesn't bother me. And every time he's seen me since he's told me how cool everyone says his vest looks now : )

And everyone was really proud of me when my story was published in the Spectator the other day - one guy even asked if he could have a copy! So the people there are starting to feel a bit like family - and no matter how hopeless your family members are, you still stick by them and help them out.

The whole tooth

2005-10-20T16:50:00.000-05:00

I'd always heard that Canadian dentists were the best in the world, but today I had that rumour confirmed. Not only are they thorough (I sat in the chair for almost two hours, so they must have been doing something in my mouth that whole time), but they're friendly, they make conversation with you, and they don't treat you like the Antichrist because you can't remember the last time you flossed.

Mind you, if there's anything that makes you want to floss, it's visiting a Canadian dentist. They go through everything with you, in every gory detail (they even send you your x-rays if you want - those stalactite things on the left are my front teeth!). And if you've grown up in Britain, the details are probably pretty gory.

It's not that British dentists (at least, the NHS ones) are crap. No, it's that they're positively negligent. It's like they aim to be worse than crap. Let me give you an example of an NHS filling:
Specifically, it's my NHS filling. Okay, so most of the tooth is amalgam, but it still counts as a filling. Look at either side of it, in the gaps between the teeth. Can you see how it juts out on both sides? The spaces above them are where no dentist's implement, no matter how technologically advanced, could ever reach. Which has made it a honeypot for bacteria and turned my gum into a puffball. Thanks NHS!!

Okay, there is a snag to Canadian dentistry. You do have to pay for it - but there's this wonderful thing called health insurance and it's worth every penny. And you know why I didn't even think about private dentistry when I was in England? Because I didn't think I really needed it. I didn't know NHS work was so shoddy.

Okay, one more picture. This is not for the queasy, by the way! Ready? Here we go...!

See the amalgam filling there (amalgam, by the way, hasn't been used in Canada in about ten years)? See how it's come away at the sides, allowing all kinds of nice bacteria to come in and cause decay? It's not even worth the forty quid I paid for it.

So, anyway, sorry to gross you all out - I just thought I should warn you what kind of dentists you're entrusting your teeth to. But then, private treatment in England is absolutely outrageous, so what else is there? I always thought it was unfair that North Americans saw the British as having bad teeth, but now I know they're right. What do you expect with this kind of dollar store dentistry?

Catching up

2005-10-18T18:00:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's been over two weeks since I got back from England. Time flies when you’re sorting out your new house, writing for two newspapers, rehearsing for ‘Guys and Dolls’, working for a shelter, and looking for jobs. Not to mention the fact that I left my immune system on the plane, so I’ve been ill twice in the last fortnight. But now all is well and I’m enjoying my first fall (aka autumn) in Canada.

Grimsby’s burning

The seasons here are spectacular and sudden. I’ll give you an example: one week in April I was walking down the street trying not to turn into a giant snowdrift. Exactly a week later, I was walking down the same street in a t-shirt. And getting sunburn.

When my plane touched down in Canada two weeks ago, the pilot said it was 28 degrees outside (God bless Canada!!). Then it rained for a week solid, and now the nights are distinctly crisp. Which has turned the trees into an inferno of red, yellow and orange, colours I didn’t think were possible in nature (unless you count tropical birds or something).

These are the kinds of colours people drive north to see. And in Grimsby, the trees have turned the escarpment tortoiseshell. It’s visible from the highway, and so astoundingly beautiful I’m surprised it hasn’t caused a car crash yet.

Walking on the escarpment is even better. The sunshine through the trees creates a kind of stained glass effect, bathing you in a thick golden light that fills you with peace. The trees sway and whisper and scatter confetti. Who needs a church?

Getting festive

And because the seasons are so distinctive, and things like fall colours are so temporary, everyone makes the most of it. Pumpkins are everywhere, so it’s pumpkin pie for six weeks solid (works for me). Wreathes of red and orange leaves decorate the front doors. People have Halloween parties and plan for trick or treaters

(no-one plans in England – I remember getting lame things like biscuits and apples when I went trick or treating).

It’s the same whether it’s Christmas or Easter or Valentine’s or Mother’s Day. Everyone makes a big deal, and everyone celebrates. I love it!!

Warming up the house

Talking of celebrating, we really have to have a house warming party. I suppose it would help if we had chairs first. Or any other furniture. But I’ve heard that people have house-warming showers here, where guests actually bring stuff for the new home! So maybe we should just throw the party and see if we get lucky (although I think a new sofa is pushing it a bit).

A lawnmower would be good, though. Until a few days ago, when Joe went into a hedge-trimming frenzy, I felt like the scruffy outcast in a neighbourhood of ruthlessly organized suburbanites. They all have beautiful lawns with seasonally appropriate ornaments, and nicely washed cars and flowers that aren’t brown. Well, I guess they would, being mostly retired. As long as they don’t object when us young ‘uns try and throw a few parties, I’m sure we’ll get along fine.

So life here is going well, and the colder weather has only just started. Plenty of pumpkin-flavoured weeks to go! Then there’s Christmas, and if the other holidays are anything to go by it’ll be the best one I’ve had since I was ten. I can’t wait!!

Images of England

2005-10-16T18:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick photo journal of my excursion to England (my last one for a while!). Bizarrely enough, it actually starts at my Dad's place in France...

Left: Me, my Dad and my stepmum next to one of their barns. We're surrounded by part of their menagerie, which includes dogs, cats, horses, and chickens. My Dad spends most of his time tending his vineyard, while my stepmum looks after the people in the guesthouse. Life there is pretty idyllic and they wouldn't go back to England for all the wine in Bordeaux (where they live).

Right: Me, my sister and her boyfriend at a ludicrously expensive Mexican restaurant in London. It's the only city in the world that could get away with charging 4 pounds ($10!!) for a bowl of guacamole. And the waitresses kept forgetting chunks of our order. Ah, English customer service...

Left: Old friends from my Oxford days. Our sleepovers, complete with junk food and silly games, are always a high point of my trips to England. Jo (horizontal) is still in her uniform from leading Brownies, where I spoke to the kids about life in Canada. They were really enthusiastic, especially one kid with red hair who told me she knew who Anne of Green Gables was. Cute : )

Right: Me and a bunch of friends at a friend's wedding. Canadians have this image of British weddings as being very polite and posh. Photographic evidence that this is several bottles of wine away from the truth...

Left: My brother, my sister and me. Even when I lived in England our reunions were pretty sporadic, but with me living in Canada they'll be yearly at best. Which makes me sad, because we have such a laugh when we get together. I guess I'll just have to get better at using the phone.

So, that's it. Everyone keeps saying I've been to England so often this year I might as well still live there, but now I have a life in Canada so I'll be crossing the pond a lot less often. Canada is amazing and there's no way I'd go back, but I miss my family and friends. If only I could persuade them to emigrate...

Going home

2005-10-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

It's always a bit weird when I come back to England. I love seeing everyone again, but then I'm here for such a short time I have to say goodbye almost immediately. This is the third time I've been here since I moved to Canada in February, so I've seen some people more often that I would have done if I'd stayed in England. But I'm also aware that this will be my last visit for a while. I need to start living in Canada properly now, instead of existing between trips to England.

So, I just said goodbye to my sister and brother and his girlfriend, and now I feel really sad because I know I won't be seeing them for ages, and for the first time I actually feel like I live in a foreign country and I'll be there for the rest of my life. Canada is great, but I feel like I've left part of me back in England. Oh well - I guess that's just part of the deal.

On the plus side, I'd forgotten how crowded and dirty and expensive London was, and I'm glad I'm getting out of here before I'm forced to remortgage the house or have a fit of claustrophobia.

Running's great for your quads, dude

2005-09-18T16:46:00.000-05:00

I did it! My first official run! 10 kilometres, and I ran the whole thing (no walking whatsoever)! And, miraculously, I did it without gasping desperately for air (well, not too desperately), collapsing in the dust, or sinking to my knees and begging God to put me out of my misery. In fact, it all went surprisingly quickly. It was almost (but not quite) easy.

10k might not be a huge deal to some people, but for anyone who's known me more than a few years it's a flipping miracle. This is me - the one who always got picked last in school rounders teams, the one who always threw to the wrong person in netball, the one who never played any sport unless forced to by some sadistic PE teacher in too short shorts. But now I'm hiking and running, and, incredibly, I want to do more! I think I might be turning into a Sporty Type. I just have to avoid tedious discussions about running shoes or glutes or protein bars - that's just taking it a little too far.

Anyway, the reason I did it all was to raise money for cancer research, so if you still haven't sponsored me (naughty!) then just click on the following link:
http://www.terryfoxrun.org/ENRunner/default.asp?s=1&RunnerID=13205

Now I'm off to a friend's BBQ to get a good dose of protein (what was that about taking it too far...?)

Thighs of rock, brains of mush

2005-09-14T06:45:00.000-05:00

I've had absolutely no time or energy for blogging lately (hence the incomplete account of my mountain trek), as every spare moment has been consumed by sorting out our house move (only 6 days to go!!), being Joe's accountant, and training for the Terry Fox Run (only 4 days to go!).

In fact, I've been training hard for the Terry Fox Run ever since I got back from hiking. What with tough work of walking up mountains, and now two weeks of going to the gym four days a week, my legs are harder than the mountains I hiked. My brain, on the other hand, has been worn down by two weeks of number crunching and, for some reason, has got more and more tired as my muscles have built up (no wonder most weight lifters are dumb).

Oh well - only four more days, then at least my body can take a rest. If you haven't sponsored me yet (the money goes to cancer research), now 's the time! All you have to do is click on http://www.terryfoxrun.org/ENRunner/default.asp?s=1&RunnerID=13205 and the rest is easy! If only moving house were as simple...

We're alive!!!

2005-09-07T17:53:00.000-05:00

Hooray! We had an amazing trip and we weren't eaten by bears! Sorry it's taken me a while to post anything - the last few days have been consumed by the slightly less exciting job of doing Joe's accounts. I've now managed to do entries for the first three days of the trip (although it won't let me put photos in). The rest will follow shortly (although the entries are so long it's probably just as well I'm doing it gradually!).

Day Six - hanging with the hikers

2005-08-30T22:08:00.000-05:00

By the next day the rain was pouring down with no intention of stopping, so the hostel was full of bored hikers. One old guy who'd railed against 'fairweather hikers' the previous evening had already set out, but he was alone. He must have been slightly insane too, as he'd had a heart transplant not too long before. It had earned him the trail name 'Newheart'.

Everyone on the Appalachian Trail gets a trail name (well, everyone except the boring guy with sleep apnea). It's all part of the culture, and when you're swapping stories about some character you came across in Virginia, everyone knows who you're talking about. Take, for example, 'Lo-Jack', whose mum made him carry a GPS device of the same name just in case he ever got lost.

Even Nina and I had trail names - we took ours from 'Winnie the Pooh'. I was always worrying about what could go wrong and wasn't a big fan of taking risks, so I was Rabbit. Nina bounced along the trail and was endlessly optimistic, so she was Tigger. Not the toughest-sounding names in the world, but hey, we're girls.

So when we befriended some other hikers on that rainy morning, they introduced themselves by their trail names. There was Squid Jerky, who got his name from the dried seafood he ate on the trail, sent to him by a friend in Korea; then there was Lost Baggage (LB for short) who was constantly leaving things behind him on the trail; and finally York, who called himself that because he had family in England. Even though they lived in Stoke-on-Trent.

We were all sitting around eating breakfast and watching crap TV. There was some show on that involved animals doing lame tricks, and everyone was taking the mick out of it. The junky food, the excessive coffee, the rubbish TV, the ruthless cynicism: I felt like a student again.

But we couldn’t sit around the hostel eating junk and watching rubbish all day, so we decided to go to the cinema and do it there instead. And boy, was it rubbish. We saw ‘The Brothers Grimm’, which was incredibly confusing and not particularly enjoyable - the cinematic equivalent of a bad trip. If it wasn’t for the fun we had tearing the film to pieces afterwards, it would have been a complete letdown.

By the time we got back to the hostel, Nina and I were starting to get itchy feet again. We’d stuffed ourselves with pizza, popcorn and ice cream, and done no physical activity after four days of hiking. There was still time left before we had to get back to real life, so we made a decision. We’d drive until it stopped raining, then find a place to hike. First stop was the Adirondacks in New York State.

So we dropped the hikers off and headed west. After six hours of driving and failing to find a cheap hotel, Nina and I pulled over to the side of the road and slept in the car. We smelled, it was cold, and it was raining outside, but we didn’t mind – it was almost like being in the mountains again.

Day Five - get off the mountain before the mountain gets you

2005-08-29T20:03:00.000-05:00

It’s my firm belief that the reason so few Westerners take God seriously is because they take so few risks. It’s kind of hard to see God at work when you’ve holed yourself up in front of the TV with a bag of crisps. What’s He supposed to do, change the channel for you? That’s why faith is way more prevalent in countries where even clean water is a miracle.

A lot of people laugh at outdoorsy types who describe their experiences as ‘spiritual, man’, but it’s true. You can’t climb a mountain, or view the earth from 10,000 feet before plummeting towards it with only a piece of silk to break your fall, without knowing God is looking out for you. It’s the same for hikers, and it was especially true on our last day on the mountain.

Nina woke up in a bad mood, so I should have known instantly that something was wrong. But I figured it was just the rain (damp gets to everyone after a while) and got on with packing up the camp. It gradually became clear, though, that Nina wasn’t feeling herself at all. She had that ‘just driven 12 hours to New Hampshire’ look again.

“My stomach’s getting pretty sore, Suz,” she said eventually. “I’ve had this before and it always turns into cramps. Usually they’re so bad I can’t even walk.”

Remember what I said about the wilderness? About dying of exposure before help comes? About being invisible to helicopters below treeline (which is where we were)? Nina looked scared, and with good reason. If she couldn’t walk, it would take me a good few hours to get down the mountain and raise the alarm.

The only thing she could do was take painkillers and hope they kicked in before the cramps did (they never kicked in after, apparently). Then we prayed and started walking.

For twenty minutes, it was all pretty nerve-wracking. At one stage Nina stopped for a breather and I went on ahead (catching up with me is pretty easy, even with stomach ache). After a few minutes, though, there was no sign of her, I yelled her name. Silence. I yelled it again, using my best stage projection voice. What if she was sitting in agony on a log somewhere?

But after an eternity her voice floated down the trail in reply, followed by her Cheshire grin and then the rest of her, uncramped.

“The painkillers kicked in!” she said. “My stomach’s slightly sore and that’s it. This has never happened before!”

The relief was so great that, for a few minutes, my legs stopped aching. The foot of the mountain was only a few hours away on an easy trail. Gravity would get us there and then we’d have showers, hot food and real beds. Life was good.

Getting out of the wilderness after four days was much weirder than I anticipated, though. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to it – I had the legs of an eighty year old and my shoulders and hips were bruised from the backpack – it was just very strange. After several hours walking through an ethereal forest where the trees stretched their limbs through the mist, inviting us to fall asleep (it was tempting) and meet our doom like in some weird German fairy tale, we found ourselves in a field. While our eyes told us it was deserted, our ears told us we were twenty metres from an interstate highway. As we got closer to the end of the trail, we could hear voices. We were back in civilization.

The voices belonged to a group of fresh faced teens who were about to take on the mountains. Their gear was new and clean, they didn’t smell and they had actual energy. As Nina and I walked past, their chatter died away. I guess the thought of looking like us in four days’ time was a pretty sobering thought.

Stepping out onto the hard shoulder of the interstate, I realized the hard work was pretty far from over. We still had to hitch 16 kilometres back to the car, and nobody seemed particularly bothered about stopping for us. We started walking. My backpack felt like it was about to dislocate my shoulders. Nina needed the bathroom. It was all a huge anti-climax.

And still we trudged, and still the lone drivers in their SUVs whizzed past us. Our feet were killing us (it’s amazing how hard pavement seems when you haven’t walked on it for a while) and we were dehydrated. But just as we were really starting to flag, just when it seemed like we’d be walking to town in the dark, someone stopped for us.

Moving along at 80 miles an hour seems like warp speed after days on foot, especially when you’re in the back of a pickup truck. Nina and I whooped and cheered as the wind blew through our hair and we saw the trail disappearing behind us. Soon we were in the nearest town, where we scored another ride in a matter of minutes. Before we knew it, we were back at the car and the hike was over.

One of the best things about hiking is how much it makes you appreciate the simple things in life. Nina’s humble Civic seemed like a gold-plated chariot that would whisk us away to a world of hot showers, non-dehydrated food, and soft dry beds. We booked ourselves into a hostel and, once we were clean, headed straight to J’s. The food was even better than it had been four days ago.

Then it was back to the hostel to hang out with our fellow hikers, sharing tales of bravery, hardship, and narrowly escaping death. After five minutes of getting to know people, though, I realized I had very little to contribute. Almost everyone in the hostel was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, which ended just 300 miles up the road having snaked its way through mountains all the way from Georgia. They’d been hiking most of the last 5 months. I hadn’t even done 5 days.

I was also put off by some obscenely boring bloke who’d done the Appalachian Trail two and a half times and its west coast equivalent (the Pacific Coastal Trail) twice. My first question to him was: why?? He then launched into an essay about how there are three types of people who do the AT, and which of them stick it through till the end, and the percentage who do, etc etc. He was one of the people trying to figure out where their life was going, and had spent five years walking and thinking. Five years!!! What a total waste of time! Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but spending five years in the woods just seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. I guess it’s his life, though.

The other two types of people are college grads and retirees, both of which were represented at the hostel and spent the rest of the evening talking about trails and hiking gear and weather conditions. Boring guy dominated the conversation with tales of how he’d caught sleep apnea or something. Eventually I couldn’t take it any more and trooped off to bed. Just as I was falling asleep, I noticed a lightning storm brewing over the mountains and was very glad I wasn’t there. There are some people who can hike for months in all conditions, eschewing showers and beds and bars and cinemas and shops and all the other things that make up modern civilization - but I am definitely not one of them.

Day Four - squelching to Madison

2005-08-28T20:01:00.000-05:00

I woke up after a restless night to find the entrance to the tent thrown open and the wind blowing wildly in. Nina was crouching there exclaiming enthusiastically over the view.

“Hey, Suz, you’re awake. You just have to come and see this!!”

What time was it? And how could Nina be so unbelievably perky? Had she found some catnip or dubious mushrooms or something? “Gimme few mins,” I mumbled irritably.

But eventually I poked my head out of the sleeping bag, overwhelmed by curiosity (having hiked two days without a shower, that wasn’t the only thing that overwhelmed me). The wind slapped me in the face. It was seriously cold.

“Look at the view!” she breathed. “It’s like heaven!!”

I had to admit, it was pretty impressive. The huge hump-backed mountains plunged like whales into the early morning mist that obscured the valley. The dew glistened on the grass outside our tent. And all around us, rising up from below to snatch the view from our sight before engulfing us and then rushing down the mountainside once more, were the clouds. We were sitting on the edge of a giant cauldron.

But I would be unimpressed by Elvis if he showed up at that time of the morning, and was way too tired to sit there in awe.

“Heaven’s cold,” I muttered cynically, and sank my head back into the sleeping bag.

Unfortunately, lie-ins aren’t really an option for the hiker. Late starts can make the difference between having a nice leisurely time setting up camp and cooking your dinner, and stumbling in the dark chewing an energy bar for tea before lying down to discover you’ve set up the tent on a large tree root.

Even with our self-imposed discipline, though, we still ended up getting a late start. And by this time, we were noticing something a little more worrying. The clouds that had looked so pretty at first light had become a permanent fixture. The weather was turning.

‘People have died above timberline from exposure. Turn back at the first sign of bad weather.’ The words from the cool warning sign at the trailhead were coming back to my mind. And this time they weren’t cool. But how could we turn back? Where would we go? Two days back the way we came, down Tuckerman’s Ravine which was a death sentence in bad weather? Or through the Great Gulf Wilderness, also two days over trails which were practically unmarked?

Nope – the only way out was forward. This was two days as well, but at least we knew the way and the trail was (relatively) good. At Mount Madison there was also a hostel where we might be able to stay. At the very least they’d have soup. We decided to go for it.

It wasn’t too long before the rain started pattering down and we had to put on our waterproofs. I’d learnt from our practice hike in the thunderstorm and had bought every Gor-Tex and polyester item imaginable so I wouldn’t get soaked again. I’d also wrapped everything in my backpack in a plastic bag. This time, we were ready.

Even with our waterproofs on, though, it was surprisingly cold. When you’re above treeline and it’s raining, hypothermia is a real danger (hence the warning sign). Just stopping for thirty seconds for a drink of water brought on uncontrollable shivering. There was no room for tiredness, moaning, self-pity, or anything else that would make you sit down and give up. Sitting down and giving up meant hypothermia, which could mean death. We had to keep moving.

So we just trudged, on and on across boulders that looked like the surface of the moon against the grey sky (left). It was not a friendly trail – often the boulders weren’t even flat, so the only option was to teeter on a sharp edge while finding somewhere to put your other foot. Sometimes you had to wedge your feet between rocks, or slide down them, or take a massive step down and land with knee-jarring force. I lost count of the times I turned my ankle over, with a stab of (thankfully brief) pain. We were just a wrong step away from immobility and – you guessed it – hypothermia.

But fortunately finding safe places to step consumed all our thoughts (they should have added ‘turn back unless you’re a mountain goat’ to the warning sign). Eventually it became mechanical, and we only stopped if we needed to look at the map (which was frequently). We weren’t hungry, we weren’t thirsty, and we couldn’t see the sun. We had absolutely no idea what the time was. We didn’t care. We just walked, knowing eventually we would find soup.

Hiking in the rain is miserable, like winter without Christmas. The amazing vistas and clear mountain air that are such a reward on other days simply aren’t there. The Grand Canyon could open up beside you and you wouldn’t see it. The wind can be fierce – on the summits, especially, the gusting wind would threaten to topple us so we had to crouch into the rocks until it died down again. Sometimes the wind was behind us, pushing us as we tip-toed across razor-sharp rocks, like a sadistic cowboy shooting at someone for fun: “Come on, girl! Move those feet! I wanna see you dance!”

But the worst part, the very worst part, the bit that made me want to go home and curl up on the sofa more than anything else in the world, was when we found out our waterproofs weren’t waterproof. It was a gradual realization – first my t-shirt began to cling to my skin, then my pack got heavier, then my boots began to squelch. While the bin liners kept the contents of my pack bone dry, the ridiculously expensive polyester and Gor-Tex crap cheerfully allowed the rain to saturate me. It was so depressing.

[Above: The rock cairns that showed us the way, and an absolutely drenched me. I'd stopped noticing the rain by this stage, hence the smile. It's amazing what you get used to when you're completely insane]

My inspiration though (apart from the promise of soup) was Nina. The wetter and wetter she got, the more effervescent she became. It was like walking behind an Alka-Seltzer. She bounced along the trail, guiding the way in her big yellow waterproof, picking wild blueberries while I caught up (honestly, anyone who can bend over to pick those things with a 50 pound pack on - see left - deserves a Victoria Cross). Then, when I eventually got to her, she would fill my hands with blueberries and start walking again. This had the effect of waving a carrot in front of a donkey, and kept me moving.

And so we worked our way towards Madison. We were less than a mile from our destination when we realized we were lost, thirty metres down a cascade of thigh-wrenching boulders which we had to climb back up again to retrieve the trail. I could see hikers on the right path, heading towards the hostel and hot food, and sprang back up the mountain in a desperate attempt to follow them. Nina followed slowly behind, the damp and the dreariness finally finding a chink in her stoic armour.

But after half an hour of peering desperately into fog, of wondering if this was the right trail or if we’d walk into a crevasse sometime soon, of deciphering cairns that guided our way as they marched into the mist, the hostel appeared.

I’d never been so happy to see a large shed. Inside were lots of very very dry people, who’d obviously given hiking a miss that day, drinking hot chocolate and steaming bowls of soup. Nina and I looked at them like tramps gazing through the window of McDonald’s. They were so dry.

I went and ordered bottomless soup and hot chocolate, then asked kitchen guy if there was anywhere we could put our tents.

“Sorry, you can’t camp near the hostel. There are tent platforms just under a mile down the mountain though.”

My heart sank. “Oh…how much is the hostel then?” It was only a mixed dorm of twelve bunk beds – how much could it be?

“Seventy-eight dollars”, he said, completely seriously.

Excuse me? How much? Seventy-eight bucks for a bunk?? It turned out that didn’t include breakfast, which was an extra ten dollars, and, by the way, wasn’t available to non-guests. So $78 buys you the right to get fleeced at breakfast. So much for the egalitarian spirit of the Appalachian Trail. Seems like no-one can resist ripping off people who have nowhere else to go.

But Nina and I did have somewhere else to go. We hiked that last mile, stumbling through the drizzle, chewing an energy bar for tea before lying down to discover the tent platform was fairly far from horizontal.

[Right: abstract shot of our stuff drying on the tent ceiling - including our mascot, Blake]

We made a mutual decision to get off the mountain the next day – what with rip-off hostels and thunderstorms on the way, the Presidential Range was no longer somewhere we wanted to be.

Day Three - Mount Washington

2005-08-27T20:51:00.000-05:00

After the first night of camping, I developed a policy of dehydrating myself from dusk till dawn so that, no matter what, I wouldn’t have to leave the tent and go pee in some dark and freezing wood. There’s nothing more terrifying (okay, there is, but give me some poetic licence here) than feeling your way through the pitch black to a stinking latrine, desperately trying not to think about the Blair Witch Project and seeing the woods loom around you like arboreal zombies.

So I was pretty grateful when dawn finally came. Not that it made me want to get up – it was freezing out there. My hiking inexperience, if it hadn’t shown already, was definitely making an appearance now. I felt like a slug and was about as slow. As Nina zoomed around making breakfast, I was puzzling over my pack like it was a Rubik’s cube, wondering how I’d managed to fit it all in the day before. Turns out the answer was extreme compression and a willingness to crush the melba crackers.

By the time we got out of there, it was 10am and the sun was high. It was already starting to get toasty and we still had 3000 feet to climb (in just under 2 miles – if you’re feeling particularly Pythagorean you can do the math) to the summit. We could already see the sides of the ravine rising up before us like massive waves of granite. They seemed to challenge us: “Come on, come and get us. Give it your best shot.” And so we did.

The ascent was astoundingly steep, at an angle of about 45 degrees. And our packs weighed between 40 and 50 pounds (about three and a half stone). But looking back, I don’t remember feeling the weight of my pack. I don’t remember feeling tired. I just remember sunshine, adrenaline, incredible views, and pushing myself harder than I’ve ever done before. It was like someone from a motivational poster had invaded my body.

I do remember feeling slightly afraid, but for once it didn’t stop me or make me slower. I just didn’t (couldn’t) look down. Looking across was okay, to our previous night’s camp and the mountains beyond, fading into a pale blue as they met the sky. But other than that, I looked up, to the day hikers and teenagers with their tiny knapsacks as we overtook them. Everyone commented on the amount of stuff we were carrying. And still we climbed. It was, in all senses of the word, unbelievable.

At the top of the ravine, Nina and I took a break and sat down near a patch of wild blueberries. Blueberries are cheap and plentiful in Canada, but the only way you can pick wild ones is to climb to them. So really they’re a special reward for hikers. Delicious, sweet and refreshing, they’re like magic pills that encourage you to keep walking.

And so we pressed on to the summit, up a slightly easier path (which isn’t saying much) consisting of the ever-familiar boulders. People climbing down kept saying “you’re almost there,” and other encouraging things. One guy told us we were looking very refreshed. Once we’d climbed past him a bit, Nina said he was probably just being nice. “No, I really meant it,” said a voice drifting up from 20 metres below. Mountain air carries sound exceptionally well.

With a last spurt of energy and a huge sense of elation, Nina and I climbed over the last few boulders onto the summit of Mount Washington. And were instantly met with cars, motorbikes, screaming kids and loud tourists taking photos. This is the very weird thing about Mount Washington. You can drive up it (or take a train if you’re feeling especially adventurous). People actually have bumper stickers saying “I drove up Mount Washington.” What kind of a claim is that?!

It was all incredibly disorientating. Everywhere there were fat Americans yelling at each other (“SAY, DORIS, YOU GOT THE BATTERIES?”), girls in high heels (I’d almost forgotten what they looked like) and kids with brown goo smeared across their faces. We found a sign saying “Mount Washington State Park” (pictured) where some woman in flip-flops was pretending to flex her muscles for the camera as if she’d actually climbed the thing. I felt like a PhD grad looking at someone who’d bought their degree off the internet. We were surrounded by cheats.

But nothing could take away the fact that we’d climbed a mountain. And when we walked into the summit’s restaurant with our packs, getting admiring looks from all the pizza-munchers, the only pros in a room full of novices, it was even better.

Self-congratulations aside, though, we still had a long way to go. Local restrictions mean you can’t camp above tree-line (with no trees for shelter your tent can get blown off the side of the mountain), so we couldn’t stay where we were. But it was already 3pm, way too late to set out in the opinion of a Mount Washington ranger. According to her, we had two choices: take the train down the mountain or die on top of it.

Nina and I decided to take our chances (there's Nina above, watching one of the last trains disappear down the mountain). Admittedly I took some persuading, but Nina said our original plan (to walk over the next mountain and then find somewhere to camp), was still workable and I believed her. Just to make sure, though, I offered up a quick prayer for a decent place to camp. Nina overheard me.

“Don’t pray for a decent place to camp,” she said. “Pray for an amazing one.” So I did.

Some would call it trail magic, but we called it an answer to prayer. After hiking Mount Adams, we took a side trail down to the valley and got lost. In the best way ever! Our path took us to a perfect camp site, about 200 yards (the recommended distance) from the actual trail. It overlooked the Great Gulf Wilderness, a valley surrounded by the crescent of the Presidential Mountains and completely, utterly, devoid of human life. And conveniently situated nearby was an enormous patch of wild blueberries.

So we set up camp there (pictured). Perfect as it was, though, there is something slightly unnerving about being in complete wilderness. If you break a leg or even twist an ankle, you can die of exposure before help comes. Further down the mountain, under cover of trees, no helicopter can see you. And like I said, there isn’t anyone around for miles and miles and miles and miles.

I can see why some people freak out when they’re on their own in the wilderness. When Nina went off to do the washing up, being alone started getting to me after only five minutes. It didn’t help that there were no tall trees around so I had to hang the bear bag off the nearest cliff (the chances of falling were probably about the same as being eaten by a bear). Once I’d finished, I went to find Nina. She was nowhere to be seen.

“Nina!” I yelled across the valley. No answer.

“Neeeeeeeenaaaaaaaa!” I yelled again, my heart pounding. How could she not hear me??

“I’m washing uuuuuuuuup!” came the cheerful reply a few agonizing seconds later. Thank God – I realized how lost I was up there without Nina, like a kid in a shopping mall. So much for my bravado earlier in the day.

But even when Nina came back, I could still feel the silence and the solitude pressing in on all sides. You don’t realize how much noise we put up with every day until there’s no noise at all. In fact, your mind can’t quite fathom it and starts making up noise of its own. As I slept that night, I swore I could hear a radio blaring far away. And even as I walked the trail the next day, I was constantly turning around to look at chattering hikers who weren’t there. It was all decidedly eerie.

Day Two - the hike begins

2005-08-26T21:03:00.000-05:00

Unpredictability is one of the big features of hiking. Things never quite turn out as planned – paths are lost, weather turns bad, ankles are sprained. The trick to survival is to be flexible, and sticking to Plan A is one of the main causes of death in the mountains.

Take, for example, a group of mountaineers who attempted to climb Everest in May 1996. They had all paid about $65,000 to be guided up there and were in view of the summit. So when their guide said the weather was turning and they should go back, they told him to go to hell. By the end of the day, that’s where they’d all gone. Stranded near the summit in freezing conditions, nine of the climbers got hypothermia so badly they lay down and died or simply walked off the mountain in confusion. One of the survivors lost his nose to frostbite. All to get value for money and a cool story for their friends.

It was stories like this that made me a bit wary of climbing Mount Washington. At 6,000 feet, it’s hardly Everest, but it still has its share of stories (all conveniently bound in a book called ‘Not Without Peril’). The hikers in these stories aren’t all stupid or unprepared – some are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Each of them illustrate the fact that, when it comes to hiking, you just never know.

Nina and I discovered this before we’d even set foot on the trail. We were all ready to go – we’d tested the stove (which burned the hair off my right hand when it spurted out flame a little too enthusiastically), packed our bags, and were just about to put our boots on when Nina started frantically searching the car.

“Oh no,” she said.

“What?”

“Oh no.” Nina has a habit of panicking for 30 seconds, letting me wait in agonizing suspense before telling me what’s wrong (although I found myself showing the same nerve-frazzling tendency).

“Please tell me my boots are in the car.”

Oh crap. You didn’t leave them at home, I thought. You didn’t –

“I left them at home. They were by the front door and I walked straight past them. I’m so stupid!” she wailed.

After a brief period of reassuring her that she was distinctly not stupid, it was a simple mistake, we could do something else and have just as much fun, etc etc, Nina’s determined streak shone through (it was never hidden for very long).

She decided she’d rather chop off her right arm than drag me all the way to the mountains and not be able to climb them, so she forked out for a new pair of shoes. We were still on plan A.

So it was on that gorgeously sunny Friday afternoon that we found ourselves standing at Pinkham Notch, head of the trail to Mount Washington. On the advice of a local ranger, we would hike halfway up, camp, then hike to the summit the next day (it was already getting late).

We made our way to the visitor centre to buy a compass (last-minute insurance) and came across a model of the Presidential Range. I looked at the path up Mount Washington. It all seemed fairly feasible until the path went up the side of a ravine and to the summit. Here the slope was almost 45 degrees. I breathed in. Clearly I wasn’t the only one taken aback, because the white dotted line indicating the path had been worn away by countless people pointing at it in horror (‘Blimey – we’re climbing that?!’).

But that was for tomorrow. For today, I’d be pleased if we could just get to the campsite. And so we set off, with warnings from Nina that we’d feel like dying after half an hour.

[The warnings weren't just from Nina - see right]

To my surprise, I didn’t feel like dying after half an hour. In fact, I didn’t feel like dying at all. Instead, I felt like I was about to collapse after about fifteen minutes, and carried on feeling like that until we got to the camp. The trail, meanwhile, was not the nice pebbly path sloping gently upwards that I’d been expecting. Instead, it was a large pile of boulders that went on forever.

The pack that had felt so light when I packed it in the motel room was now tugging ruthlessly at my shoulders. It had the weight and behaviour of a small child, one who didn’t feel like a piggyback any more and was playing at kicking my kidneys instead. Throughout the hike, I found my pack would get heavier or lighter according to my mood. If I was feeling positive and energetic, I couldn’t even feel it (I would discover this the next day). If I felt very tired, or we were lost, or the weather was bad, it would feel like I was lugging bowling balls. This was definitely a bowling ball moment.

But there were moments of relief. I saw my first wild chipmunk (they’re almost as common as squirrels over here, so Nina was slightly bemused at the fuss I made), and every now and again we would get a peep of view between the trees. It showed us how high we’d climbed and helped spur me on.

And, to my great relief, we got to camp before sunset (hiking in the dark is something I never, ever want to do). After negotiating a path even more ridiculously rocky than the trail, we found an open-fronted shelter where we could stick our sleeping bags. Two people had already occupied half of it – Pearce, an American guy, and his Spanish girlfriend Elena. They were overwhelmingly friendly and helpful.

After dinner, my first real initiation into camping began. A bear roaming around the camp is definitely something to be avoided, and the best way to do this is to put all your food in a bag and string it up between two trees, far away from the tent or shelter. This is way easier said than done, especially with five days’ worth of food. As Pierce and Nina sat in the shelter peeing themselves laughing, Elena and I (both complete novices) tried to lob a rock wrapped with string over a very high branch, so we could tie the bag with one end and haul it into the tree. It was dark and we were crap shots, so it took about half an hour. But, eventually, we did it! And it turned out Elena was a sailor so we had the knots thing down. The camp was safe, thanks to us : )

So with our earplugs firmly wedged in our ears (when you’re in the woods, cracking twigs and rustling leaves can keep you up all night), and with the stars freckling the late night sky, we settled down to our first night in the wild. Tomorrow, we would conquer a mountain.

Day One - the road trip

2005-08-25T21:46:00.000-05:00

One of the best things about North America is its size. Its people are bigger (both in personality and size), its wildlife is bigger (raccoons, bears and caribou compared to England’s squirrels, foxes and deer), and its land mass is completely enormous.

This makes possible one of the great legends of North America: the road trip. Unless you drive into mainland Europe, road trips in England are pretty insignificant; no motel stops, hardly any decent coffee shops, and by the time you’ve started singing show tunes you’re already in Slough or wherever.

So I was looking forward to my initiation. Although Nina and I weren’t in the best shape at half past five that Thursday morning – I’d had two weeks of sleepless nights, plagued by dreams of wandering through fog in hypothermic confusion while desperately calling Nina’s name, and Nina had the worst flu in the history of man.

But coffee is a wonderful thing. So after a brief stop at Tim Horton’s (our last decent coffee for a week – it’s notoriously bad across the border) we were off to America.

By lunchtime we’d reached Montreal, where we took a break and enjoyed Canada’s answer to Europe. Even though I’ve only been here six months, it was still a novelty to see buildings more than twenty years old and walk down narrow cobbled streets. Trouble is, the European feel extends to everything. Entrance to the city was via a vast traffic jam, and getting out took about an hour because the signs are crap and the roads resemble spaghetti.

There was a beautiful main square, though, complete with all the things you’d expect to see in St Tropez like caricature artists, street clowns and some guy playing Celine Dion on the sax (no luxury yachts, though). We stopped in a little café and watched the world go by, feeling like tourists in our own country. Even the language was different. It’s one of the many things I love about Canada.

But we were soon to be in the not-so-different world of New England. One wave of my American passport (they didn’t even look at my photo – and Nina got across with nothing more than a smile) and we were in Vermont.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a distinct picture of Vermont. It goes like this: beautiful white steepled church, nestled in trees that are every shade of red, yellow and orange, with green hills rolling across the landscape. That’s Vermont.

And sure enough, that’s exactly what it was like. Okay, so there was only the odd red tree (glorious technicolour doesn’t show up till the end of September), but otherwise it was perfect. The setting sun turned everything pink, including the churches. Little villages with more white steeples kept surfacing from the valleys. We were driving through a postcard.

Eventually we arrived at St Johnsbury, close to the border with New Hampshire, and decided we should visit some sort of information centre. Amazingly, the town had one and it was open. We peeped in to an enormous entrance room with leaflets covering every available surface. At first it seemed as if no-one was there – just a very very huge moose head, about the size of a baby elephant’s, hanging off the far wall. But as we walked closer, we noticed something under the moose head. A tiny white haired old lady looked up at us, her face crinkling into a smile.

She couldn’t have been more glad to see us if we were family she’d been expecting, and was a mine of information. Nina commented on the moose head.

“Oh yes, it is quite big,” she laughed. “I just hope it doesn’t fall on me.”

By the time we left the town, I was going into driver’s hypnosis and Nina was strung out on aspirin. We’d planned to get to the trail head and camp there for the night, but the prospect of hiking in the dark with a feverish friend was not one I particularly relished. We drove into Berlin, New Hampshire (Americans also love original place names), in the shadow of Mount Washington, and looked for a motel.

Well, Berlin turned out to be a perennially useless place to get anything. Not only was the motel hideously expensive and staffed by people who’d attended the Basil Fawlty school of hospitality, it had an outdoor shop which sold none of the equipment we needed and a cinema which was shut. All the time. We headed down the road to Gorham.

After getting a slightly less hideously expensive motel, it was time to find a restaurant. By this stage, Nina was in seriously bad shape. She was burning hot and cold, felt nauseous, and her eyes were actually gumming up. I don’t know how she conned me into letting her drive (was I insane??) but she did.

There’s a phenomenon in the wilderness that hikers like to call ‘trail magic’. Whenever things seem really bad, or you’re just too tired and exhausted to hope that circumstances will let up, something absolutely amazing happens. It’s just another name for divine intervention. And we felt it when we reached J’s Corner.

We shuffled into the restaurant to be told the kitchen was shut. Nina said she was about to cry (to be honest, her eyes were in such a state it would probably have been a good thing), so the waitress went out back and asked again.

“Yep, we can do you something,” she said (God bless American customer service!).

We gratefully chatted to the waitress and said we’d been on the road for twelve hours straight. She took one look at Nina, who looked like she’d just been exhumed, and said:

“Was she driving?”

So I guess we weren’t looking our best. But we perked up once the food came. It was amazing! Big bowls of thick chunky soup with steaming baked potatoes. It hit the spot so exactly that Nina and I just made ‘mmm’ noises as we ate, as a substitute for actual conversation. The other customers looked at us very weirdly. But we didn’t care – we had full bellies and a bed for the night. And for a hiker, that’s about as good as it gets.

For those about to hike, we salute you

2005-08-22T16:36:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, Nina and I decided to do a practice run for our hike this week. A couple of days previously I'd walked 6 miles and suffered nothing worse than slightly sore feet, so what could possibly go wrong? We planned to walk 6 miles to the cinema in the next town, where we would meet Nina's family to catch a movie.

Our plan, seemingly so simple, turned out to be hopelessly ambitious. We were only halfway to the cinema when the movie started. We lost the trail, climbing vertically up the Niagara escarpment (excellent practice for mountain hiking) and coming smack up against a fence backing onto a very rich person's garden. On the other side of the garden was the main road. Unwilling to climb back down again, and not knowing how we would find the trail anyway, we decided our only chance was to trespass.

We scrambled over the fence, desperately trying not to giggle and hoping the rich people didn't have dogs. We tippy-toed across their extensive driveway and made it to the front gate, closing it with a sigh of relief. That's when we saw the sign: “DANGER – Do Not Open. Dogs on Loose.” Thank God the rich people were on holiday (either that or the sign was bluffing).

The film trailers had already started and there was still a long way to go, but it was only along residential roads so we decided to finish what we’d begun. That’s when God decided to unleash His fury on southwestern Ontario.

As a tornado raged 100 kilometres away, Nina and I marched on through a monsoon. The horizontal rain made a laughing stock of my ‘waterproof’ jacket and rendered Nina’s umbrella useless (although that still had a purpose as a potential lightning rod). It whipped our legs sore and turned my backpack into a large (and heavy) sponge. Everything was soaked. We couldn’t have been wetter if we’d jumped into the nearest swimming pool.

As the roads turned to rivers and each driveway became a waterfall, we squelched on, flagging down passing cars in the hope that one of them, any of them, would stop. They didn’t. And just as I was beginning to get seriously worried, just as I was descending into waterlogged hopelessness and considering banging on someone’s door for help, we saw a Tim Horton’s ahead. Canada had saved us.

Once we were out of the storm, it was easy to laugh at what happened. Standing in a steadily growing puddle at the counter in Tim Horton's, ordering hot chocolate and bagels, getting stares of disbelief from everybody, it all seemed like a hilarious anecdote. We laughed even more when a member of staff picked up a ‘Caution: Wet Floor’ sign and wordlessly placed it at my feet. The crowning achievement of the day: I’d become a health and safety hazard!!

But being in the storm wasn't so funny. And at least the rain and wind were warm – what about the rain and wind in the White Mountains? What would happen if we got soaked up there? Where there were no cars to flag down, no Tim Horton’s, nobody we could call? What about Mount Washington, which has had the fastest wind speed and the lowest wind chill ever recorded? What about the 122 people who’ve died there of hypothermia? And then there’s the bears. Forget about guard dogs, what about the bears??? There are 5000 of them in New Hampshire alone!

Yet in spite of all that, and in spite of several sleepless nights imagining various ways I could stumble to my death, I still really want to trek the White Mountains. We even have a route now: the Presidential Traverse! Hiking the entire Presidential Range in one week! Eight mountains over 4000 feet! Here’s what Bill Bryson says in A Walk in the Woods:

“The White Mountains have 35 peaks higher than 3000 feet. If Ben Nevis were on the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire, it would just squeak into the top 10. Snowdon would be swallowed without trace.”

Certainly sounds character-building. So wilderness, here we come! And, just for the record, I love all my family and friends very much, and I bequeath my worldly goods to Joe. If I don’t blog again before I go, expect an entry in the first few days of September. If there isn’t one, it means Gentle Ben has had me for supper.

From sheltered life to shelter

2005-08-18T17:55:00.000-05:00

One of the best bits about working at the shelter is when someone trusts you enough to speak to you in confidence. This happened to me on Wednesday, when one of the guys I play poker with said he might be a dad soon (he finds out next week). I was so excited!! But, of course, the stuff people tell you in confidence isn't always good. The conversation continued.

The guy started telling me one of his pot stories (he has several). I wondered where he got the money for drugs from (the obvious answer would be crime, but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt), so I asked him. It turned out my optimism was unfounded.

“I rob stores,” he said, nonchalantly.

“Oh.” I wasn't really sure what else to say. “How do you hold them up?”

“With a knife.”

“Oh”, I said, slightly more emphatically. He told me he worked with an accomplice who was “even more willing than I am to kill people.” I was even more lost for words when he told me he'd stabbed a guy in the hand for not doing what he said.

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised to hear stories like this. After all, life is pretty tough on the streets, and lots of worse things have probably happened. But I still find it hard to grasp how bad things can get.

It's also easy to look at the people who come to the shelter and say “Oh, poor innocent victims, the world has dealt them such a cruel blow.” And it has. But a lot of them, for various reasons, are pretty far from innocent. So you have to tread a fine line between patronizing them, or saying that crime, drugs or violence is right, and judging them.

I guess I'm doing an okay job, because the guy who runs the morning programme wants me to start interviewing people who come to the shelter, to find out about their background so they can be helped. Sounds like it could be good.

In the meantime, I’m getting used to the fact that one (or possibly more) of my friends enjoys stabbing people. That is really weird.

The Long and Winding Robe

2005-08-17T16:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday distinguished itself as the day in my life spent entirely in a robe. Okay, I’ll explain. First of all, I played Mary telling a story about Jesus in our church’s video for kids (here I am dressed in not much more than a sheet, drinking coffee through a straw to avoid smudging my very un-Marylike lipstick).

Then, in the evening, we went to a Sikh wedding where I wore my friend’s beautifully coloured, but marginally oversized, pyjama suit (below). Actually, it was the reception rather than
the wedding, but it was still brilliant fun. The bride and groom arrived about an hour late, and were immediately treated to a performance involving folk dancing girls and boys doing bhangra. The girls were of, shall we say, varying quality, but the guys were absolutely brilliant.

They came on holding these lattice things that looked like they should be holding up the flowers in someone’s garden. When these lattices were compressed together, they made a loud ‘clack’ in time to the music. The guys whirled around the dancefloor, synchronized and in formation, moving their hands and feet and clacking to the bhangra beat. It was all very rhythmic and hypnotic – I’d never seen anything like it.

As they danced, people came and threw money at them as a kind of thank you. Except they were throwing money at them – often in a teasing sort of way, often with a little jig of their own. It was something I couldn’t quite work out, and it was way, way too loud to ask anyone.

After that, the bhangra started up again and everyone came on the dancefloor to have a go. And I mean everyone – there were even granddads up there! The guy on the left in the black turban (pictured) had invited Joe and I (his wife was the one I partied with a month ago). At the end of the evening, he told me he’d never had a sister, and would I be his panji (Punjabi for sister)? In return, I could call him bhaji (brother – or, if you’re feeling literal, a deep fried onion snack) and he would beat up anyone who hassled me. I agreed enthusiastically – not only is having a tall big brother extremely handy, it was also a huge honour. And I get a Punjabi title!!

[Left: cute kids at the wedding]

Of course, this being an Indian wedding, the entire family was there to the fifth and sixth generation. It didn’t entirely surprise me that this included English people. But due to a reverse cultural snobbery in me (I’ve only just left the place!), I didn’t talk to them for very long. Especially when they started banging on about being homesick, having been away from England for all of three days. I mean, they were from Southall. It’s a great place to buy Indian stuff, and I’ve had very nice food in their Gurdwara (free meals for people of all faiths is a highlight of Sikhism), but it’s not really a place I’d pine for. I mean, what’s to miss? “Oh, how I long to sit in the perennially still traffic jam that snakes along the high street! I yearn for the days when I couldn’t walk from shop to shop without bumping into people for lack of space! I dream of crappy public transport, and those rancid and inexplicable smells that each gust of wind would conveniently waft up my nose!” As if.

[Right: Balwinder, mum and friend enjoy the show]

These were the thoughts going through my head as I talked to an English girl during a fresh air break. “You don’t get things like this in England, either,” she said, dubiously nodding towards a scrap unfolding a short distance away. I wondered what kind of social life she’d led, presumably one involving an ivory tower and being fed grapes, that didn’t mean going into an English town centre on a Friday night. Because fights are what guys do for entertainment there. Not to mention the girls.

[Left: All the women wore candelit jars on their heads in a ceremony at the end of the night. I'm under the jar on the right]

“And they talk funny here,” moaned English girl. This from someone who finished every sentence with the word “innit”. I guess some people just aren’t used to travelling abroad. And Canada is as capable as any country of inducing culture shock (I’d experienced it myself). But after three days? Come on.

Anyway, I’ve gone on for long enough. I’ll just leave you with a picture of the motor racing on Sunday, when we watched Joe’s boss burn rubber in his Corvette. He’s also English, has twelve exotic cars, made his millions in Canada, and wouldn’t go back to Blighty now for all the tea in China (or India). That’s the attitude : )

The spice of life

2005-08-12T23:31:00.000-05:00

There are many words to describe my life at the moment, but boring is not one of them. Take this weekend as an example: today I helped out in the shelter; tomorrow I'll be doing a video shoot for our church's kids ministry; and tomorrow evening I'm going to a Sikh wedding. Sunday I might be watching Joe do amateur motor racing in a Ferrari. And the weekend after I'll be preparing to hike the Appalachians.

I was thinking about this when I bumped into my Turkish friends at the library the other day. We were standing there exchanging rudimentary Turkish, when some people I knew from the shelter walked by. They heard me speaking some strange language and glanced at me in bewilderment; had the Turks seen the shelter guys, who are punks, the look would probably have been returned. I wondered who would come if I threw a party of everyone I knew here in Canada: Turks, punks, Argentinians, wiccans, pastors, natives, drug addicts, Italians, film-makers, animators, journalists, missionaries, possibly an Iraqi. My life at the moment is endlessly varied - I love it!

The Iraqi I mentioned above is a car dealer friend of Joe's. He left the country before the war started, and was telling us about Saddam Husseins's sons. By all accounts, they were complete nutters. They killed this car dealer's dad just for complaining about some money he was owed. They would give presents to people, then claim the present was actually stolen and have people imprisoned and tortured for it. They would have celebrities over for dinner, then set the dogs on them just for a laugh. After his dad was killed, the car dealer had to leave the country, taking his entire family with him, or they would have been killed too. Whether or not the means were right, and despite the ensuing mess, it was definitely a good thing that Saddam was kicked out.

Anyway, here are some more photos of how totally excellent summer in Canada is. We spent last weekend at Joe's parents cottage on a lake, going out on their speedboat, eating way too much, playing poker (socialising at the shelter means you get good at cards), and generally having a brilliant time. If this doesn't persuade you lot in England to come and visit, I don't know what will!

[Left: me on a very glamorous speedboat, wearing a very dorky lifejacket, with my little niece]

[Right: us eating a delicious Italian lunch outside the cottage]

[Left: the view from the cottage]

These boots were made for walking

2005-08-11T15:56:00.000-05:00

You'd think that, moving to a country that also speaks English, I'd have no communication problems in Canada. And, pretty much, I don't. But when I do have them, they drive me nuts. Take the last couple of days, for example. Yesterday I was working on the door at the shelter, taking everyone's names as they walked in. When I asked for their surname, though, there was puzzled silence. Apparently Canadians don't use the word 'surname' any more. It's old-fashioned. I kept having to remind myself to use 'last name' instead. So doing the door took twice as long.

Today, I was on the bus and rang the bell to get off at the next stop. I was halfway down the bus, and the driver yelled at me, "The next stop isn't for 3 blocks [a long way]. Didn't you know?" Errr...no, I'm not intimately acquainted with the bus routes of Hamilton. I believe that means I have a life. Sorry about that.

Stuff like this hardly ever happens, so it's no big deal, but I still get frustrated by it. Especially as Joe doesn't experience it (being Canadian) so has no idea what I'm on about when I try and tell him. Doubly frustrating.

Oh well - looking on the bright side, I did buy my brand spanking new hiking boots today! Yay! Apparently they take 2 weeks to break in. I have a week and a half. Uh-oh.

[Left: My hiking boots. Shiny and new!!]

There was all sorts of other paraphernalia in the camping shop, which I found fascinating but utterly useless. There were ludicrously expensive hiking socks with manly straplines like "Rugged. Canadian. Original." Um - Canadian socks are original? There were snakebite kits with "easy-to-use lymph constrictors" and other scarily mind-boggling features. There were absolutely disgusting dehydrated meals, including chocolate fudge cake and something called 'Tex-Mex' which was apparently spicy scrambled egg (probably more useful for inducing vomiting in the event of a snake bite). Finally, and my personal favourite, was a tiny tiny all-in-one espresso maker which made just enough coffee for one person. Although, to be honest, if you need espresso that badly when you're out hiking, maybe you shouldn't be going out into the wilderness for seven days straight. Especially not on your own.

The call of the wild

2005-08-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

For a few months now (actually, ever since I arrived in Canada) I've been thinking how great it would be to explore a bit of this massive continent, and see what kind of place I've moved to beyond the concrete sprawl of southern Ontario. It struck me as an especially good idea in the absence of a job. But unfortunately I haven't managed to find anyone else in the same situation who I could travel with. Until now.

My friend Nina not only has her summer holidays (and therefore the rest of August) free, but loves travelling. So we're going to...wait for it...hike the Appalachian Trail together!!! This probably means nothing to most of you, so I'll explain. The Appalachian Trail runs 2100km up the eastern coast of America, from Georgia to Maine, over (for Brits) towering mountains and through townships of toothless inbreds who all call each other 'Mum'. It has maple trees and blueberries and all sorts of other funky north American stuff, not to mention slightly less funky stuff like bears, wolves, snakes, and various other things that can kill you.

[Left: the Appalachians. Wow.]

It's the subject of Bill Bryson's book "A Walk in the Woods", which I started reading today in a fit of enthusiasm and excitement (it'll probably last until lunchtime on the first day of hiking). I'm only on chapter 1 so he's still in the preparatory stages (like me!) and not really sure what he's letting himself in for (again, like me):

"Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving some guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering in a hoarse voice, "Bear!" before sinking into a troubled unconsciousness."

Hm. Admittedly we're not walking the whole trail (just the White Mountains part in New Hampshire - we'll be gone a week or so), but if the whole thing wasn't so cool and exciting I would definitely have my reservations. Nina's an experienced hiker. She's German (think Von Trapp family), and pretty fit. She also doesn't eat a whole lot. I can just picture hunger clawing at my stomach at lunchtime on the first day, while Nina strides ahead, energised by nothing more than lungfuls of fresh air. Help!!

[Below: Nina. I'm hoping her endless optimism will carry us through]

I also have no equipment, which means I either have to bankrupt myself, or stumble the trail for a week with damp clothes and trench foot and nothing but bread to fill me up. Or - the sensible option - I can borrow (fortunately, Nina's husband has lots of stuff - heck, he's probably the same shoe size as me).

Anyway, who cares about the 'what ifs'? The unknown parts just add to the coolness of the whole thing. And it'll make great blog : )

Photo-tastic!

2005-08-04T14:40:00.000-05:00

By the way, I've added photos to some earlier blog entries - check out July 18 and June 30! Here's one of us chilling out at Joe's parents' house over the weekend:

As I think I've mentioned before, their house costs about the same as our 900 square foot flat in Ladbroke Grove. To find out about emigrating to Canada, check out: www.cic.gc.ca

Go on, you know you want to!! : )

A weekend with a view

2005-08-03T18:25:00.000-05:00

Canada has a great habit of having a day off (our version of a bank holiday) every month throughout the summer. There was one in June, one in July, and one last Monday (it's just called a ‘civic holiday’, because it's not to commemorate anything in particular, although different areas have given it their own names – very typical of Canada).

Anyway, it was a long weekend, and our friends Nick and Izzy were over from England, so we had a great time. Panoramic views featured heavily as we spent Sunday night up the CN Tower (Toronto's landmark, and the tallest freestanding structure in the world - incidentally, if a Canadian tests your general knowledge by asking you where the longest/ tallest/greatest/heaviest thing in the world is, the answer is always Canada. Every Canadian knows these statistics. Don't ask me why).

[Above: Us up the CN Tower. Check out the view!!]

On Monday we climbed up the Niagara Escarpment in Grimsby. The views from there are phenomenal, and it’s 30 minutes’ walk from where we're going to live - !! The walking trail goes all the way along the Niagara Peninsula (about 2-3 hours’ drive), and is surrounded by lush forest most of the way. I can feel some serious treks coming on : )

[Left: Joe enjoying the view. This is practically our back garden!
Below: Me and a view of Grimsby/Lake Ontario. Halfway between my left elbow and the right hand edge of the photo is a yellow dot. That's where the Grimsby News, one of my freelance papers, is]

Anyway, enough of the rambling. On Tuesday it was back to the shelter in Hamilton (yup, life is pretty varied at the moment). I was chatting to someone I'd spoken to several times before, but I'd never realised he was an Indian (ie Native Canadian). Until I got to Canada, I thought all natives had long hair and weathered reddish-brown skin (I wasn’t quite naive enough to think they all lived in wigwams), but a lot of them just look Italian or Spanish.

Not only was he native, but this guy was also an Acadian. I'd actually read about the Acadians – they’re a mixture of native and French, who lived on the very east tip of Canada until the British colonised that part in about 1755 (history buffs can check out this website: http://collections.ic.gc.ca/acadian/english/toce/toce.htm). The British forced all the Acadians to leave, displacing about 10,000 people and ruining an entire culture. There’s now only about 600 of them left, and I was talking to one.

He was explaining his culture and traditions to me, and I was completely fascinated. This guy is usually pretty quiet and shy, and this was the first time I'd really seen him light up. It's those kind of times I really enjoy at the shelter : )

The poetry workshop was a bit of a disaster though. I’ve seen other people try to speak there, and usually most of their audience goes outside for a fag for the length of their talk. The same happened to me – I was down to five people before I even opened my mouth! : ) I guess not everyone wants to vent their feelings in verse, although one or two people seemed interested so you never know.

Anyway, I’m pretty knackered (still getting used to the early starts!) so I’ll be off now. I’ll try not to melt before my next blog (it’s 33 degrees here today!!).

Getting things in perspective

2005-07-29T18:13:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, but having lived my entire life with family, food and a roof over my head, I find it hard to imagine how bad life could really be. Even when people are obviously hard up, like at the shelter, I find myself thinking: "Well, they're smiling and laughing, and they look okay. Things can't be that bad." But often, they are. I spoke to one guy a couple of days ago who'd slept outside the previous night (which was unusually cold). He didn't even have a blanket. How do these people cope in winter, when it's 30 below outside?

(Answer: a lot of them freeze to death. I've been told "that's just the way it is." Why??)

Another guy I was speaking to today said his t-shirt smelled of puke (I hope you're not reading this at dinner time!!). "Oh," I said, not really knowing what to say. "Did you puke on it?"

"Probably," was his reply. He didn't even know. That's a pretty bad state to be in. Even worse than being cold or smelly must be the knowledge that you have absolutely nowhere to go. It must feel so incredibly lonely.

So I found myself wondering what I could possibly have in common with the people at the shelter. But actually, for people with not much in common, we get on surprisingly well. We had a real laugh this morning just talking about movies and cars and stuff, and there's this one guy who always tells me about the latest thing he's written. He's going to bring something in for me to read.

Sometimes I enjoy myself so much, I forget I'm also there to make sure the shelter's rules aren't broken (things like swearing and playing practical jokes). I'm pretty crap at the discipline part. The writer guy was telling me this morning how he used to steal the badges off Mercedes cars and replace them with a Happy Meal toy. I guess I should have said something along the lines of, "nooo, crime is bad", but I actually thought it was pretty funny. Same with the guy who was teaching me how to swear in Russian the other day. I mean, it's in another language, it's not like anyone can understand, right?

Another annoying shelter rule is that you can't speak to or make contact with anyone when they're outside the shelter. I'd love to just take someone to the movies one day (a lot of people there are bored and penniless), and I could use the company - but it's a no-no. I suppose it makes sense - a lot of volunteers at the shelter are girls and a lot of the guys are, well, guys. So they've probably had 'inappropriate' relationships develop in the past. Trouble is, I live so near the shelter I keep bumping into the homeless people wandering around - but they seem pretty closed off when they're out on the street, so sometimes they don't even say hi. That makes me kind of sad, but I can't really blame them.

Anyway, I'll be seeing a lot more of them next week because I'm getting paid (yay!) to work three extra mornings. I'm also doing a poetry workshop so it involves writing too! If only that could become some kind of permanent job...

I'm so glad we're moving

2005-07-26T15:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, permission to whinge. Yes, Canada is a fabulous country, snowy in the winter and sunny in the summer. And on top of that there's lots of heating and air conditioning so you're never uncomfortable, right? Er, not quite. Hamilton was obviously hiding behind a door when God was handing out standards of living for Canadian cities. Our apartment has no air conditioning.

No big deal - we just borrowed a unit from some friends, and fixed it into our window. What we didn't think about was all the humidity in the air. We discovered the hard way that all that water goes into the air conditioner and, if you're not too careful, leaks into all those hard-to-see places in your bedroom where mildew loves to grow.

This all happened last Monday - so we cleared everything up, sprayed Lysol (the holy grail of mildew remover) everywhere, and life went back to normal. Then we discovered yesterday that it had happened again. So again, we dutifully scrubbed and sprayed. Now today it's happened AGAIN!!! We even changed the position of the air conditioner so this wouldn't happen! But now we're in the middle of a tropical rainstorm and all that water has come through the air conditioner from outside. Bastard.

Normally I hate swearing but this is getting too much. I feel like freakin' Jennifer Connelly in 'Dark Water'. There's damp spots and the smell of mould everywhere. And nothing dries out because it's too humid!! Come back, English summers, all is forgiven!

...actually, maybe that's going a bit far. I mean - did you see Glastonbury this summer??

Breaking news!

2005-07-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

WE'RE IN!!!! They accepted our offer! We've got a house!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're buying a house!!!

2005-07-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

Guess what?! We just put an offer in on a house!!! How unbelievably scary is that?! Actually, I can think of much scarier things - but none of them involve forking over $260,000. Admittedly it's only 120,000 pounds, but that's still a hefty amount of cash. Look what you get for your money though...

http://www.mls.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?vd=&SearchURL=%3fMode%3d0%26Page%3d1%26vs%3d1%26rlt%3d%26cp%3d%26pt%3d26%26mp%3d250000-300000-0%26mrt%3d-1-0-0%26Beds%3d0-0%26Baths%3d0-0%26f%3d3%26ft%3dall%26o%3dA%26of%3d1%26ps%3d10%26ptgid%3d1%26aid%3d6521%26MapURL%3d%253fAreaID%253d888&Mode=0&PropertyID=3787497

Could that url be any longer?! Anyway, to summarise: it has a pool, as well as nice size back garden, garage, massive front garden, hardwood floors, new kitchen (with dishwasher, microwave, and oven thrown in), funky lighting, basement (with bedroom, WC, study and utility room), and on the ground level there are three bedrooms and a fixed up bathroom. And it's walking distance from the town centre!!!

Okay, enough of the exclamation marks. Like I said, we've only put in on offer - it hasn't been accepted yet. We should find out in the next 48 hours or so. But that's like a 48 hour Hitchcock movie! I can't take the suspense!!! (or the excessive exclamation marks!!!)

She didn't notice that the lights had changed

2005-07-18T20:54:00.000-05:00

When I first came to England as a 6 year old, I didn't really know how everything worked and was also not blessed with a huge amount of common sense. As a result, I often messed up (often very publicly, like not knowing what to do in a game of netball) which either annoyed people or made them laugh.

I can thank the Canadians (and 21 years of maturity) that the same thing hasn't happened here. It felt pretty close on Sunday though, when I stopped at a flashing red traffic light and had no idea what to do. We just don't have them in England, and I'd totally forgotten what it meant in Canada. With the car behind me beeping and having nearly pulled into traffic moving the other way, I panicked so much I couldn't hear Joe telling me what to do. Finally I figured everyone was just waiting for me, so I drove off with a screech of rubber. In my mind I'd just thrown the ball to the other team and Emma Carter was screaming at me in frustration.

Anyway, traumatic psychological flashbacks aside, it's been a pretty good weekend. On Sunday evening I went to an Indian women's party one of Joe's colleague’s wives had invited me to. She'd even got me a beautiful dark green pyjama suit embroidered in gold with little sparkles all over it.

I was going to meet her there, so I walked into the big hall looking for someone with long dark hair in Indian dress. That narrowed it down to the entire room. As I walked around looking for Balwinder, I could feel a thousand eyes following me around. Not only was I the only white person in the place, but staring isn't a problem in Indian culture (hey, at least they’re not pretending not to stare). In fact, from my experience in the country itself, it's positively encouraged. I felt like a piece of white chocolate in a bag of Buttons.

Anyway, I eventually found her and suddenly there was a flurry of activity in an attempt to make me ‘look Indian’. I have to say, they did a pretty good job (see below!). What with nose rings, arm bracelets, and earrings with bits woven into my hair, the jewellery stall made a killing. And I felt great : )

[Above: Possibly the least white I've looked in my entire life. And definitely the only time I've looked good in ethnic dress]

Then there was an Indian dancing and fashion show. This was supposed to be the highlight of the evening, but to be honest I preferred experiencing it than watching it. Being decorated like a Christmas tree (hey, I was in green), eating aloo and chickpeas, and dancing frenetically to bhangra later in the evening - those were my favourite parts. And at the end of it all, Balwinder’s sister-in-law invited me to a wedding.

“Don’t worry about what to wear. Our wardrobes are open – and we’ll make you look like a proper Indian woman,” she said. I can’t wait!!

The next morning I was back at the homeless shelter again, with only sore feet and green armpits (I guess my suit wasn’t colour fast!) as a reminder of the night before. A rude return to reality perhaps - but actually, I'm really beginning to enjoy it. As always, it's the people that make it. The shelter is for 13-25 year olds so everyone is roughly my age (okay, slightly younger), and although some of them are closed up, a lot of them are really open and friendly. My ‘helping out’ with breakfast involves chatting to people and having a laugh over free coffee. There's hard work too, but there’s still time to chat so it goes really quickly.

Towards the end of breakfast, I was talking to one guy about how I came from England.

“So, you moved all the way from England to Canada because you wanted to help out in a homeless shelter?” he asked, laughing.

That make me think. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what I want to do here. I'm guessing journalism has something to do with it. But for now at least, helping in a homeless shelter will do very nicely too.

Brewing up a storm

2005-07-16T21:55:00.000-05:00

Just came back from the house of my only Canadian relative (she's my sixth cousin - my uncle in Bristol found her on the family tree and got us in touch!). I've mentioned her before, she's the one married to the barbecue champion. He might be going down to Tennessee for the Jack Daniel's BBQ competition this year, and if he does I'll see if I can tag along because it would make a great feature story.

Anyway, we whiled away a chilled-out evening drinking beer on their back porch and watching the first storm we've had in ages. I love Canada's violent weather. It's either blazing hot or freezing cold or peeing it down. And the lightning is incredible! Plus rain is a bit of a novelty at the moment. But I guess I'm sounding smug now : )

Always Volunteer

2005-07-15T17:15:00.000-05:00

Today was my second day working at the shelter. My first discovery was that I can't decipher Canadian accents at eight o'clock in the morning (the guy in charge had to ask me three times to do something - he probably thinks I'm a bit slow now).

At breakfast, they've got me sitting down and chatting to people while most of the other volunteers serve up the food. It's a bit nerve-racking, and hungry tired people aren't really up for conversation, but it's nice to sit down and share a coffee anyway. Plus there's the odd chatterbox, like the guy this morning who used to go to the shelter and now volunteers there.

He told me about his experience with drugs, like mushrooms ("acid without the flashbacks") and speed ("50 times stronger than coffee"). For someone who smoked about two spliffs in her entire life (bringing on a fit of paranoia that taught me never to do it again), it was quite an education.

I also learnt a bit more from him about why Hamilton is such a vortex of deprivation. Homeless people seem to be either kicked out of Toronto or find it too intimidating, so they come to a smaller city like Hamilton. This has to be the least well-heeled place in Ontario (because it's industrial) so benefits are easier to get and poor people stick out less. There's been such an influx of them that countless shelters and other charities have sprung up to meet the demand, drawing more homeless people here, and so on.

Later, I went out litter picking with three or four of the homeless people as part of their work program. Actually, it's often quite hard to distinguish between volunteers and homeless people at the shelter (they're often the same age and aren't in their Sunday best). Especially when their reasons for being there are sometimes the same. I asked one of the litter-pickers why she did the work program. "It's something constructive to do with my day," she replied. Snap.

[Pictured: Litterpickers from the shelter. Not us though - we didn't have rakes]

Another guy asked me if I was going to litter-pick in my sandals. I said I was.

"You might want to look out for needles, that's all," he said, looking at my toes with concern. In the end there weren't any, but it did scare me for about five minutes.

Needles and odd looks from the locals aside, though, litter-picking was surprisingly satisfactory. Walking past the same park later that day, I looked at all the kids running around and playing in bare feet. It was nice to know they were safe partly because of me.

Anyway, I did say I was going to make my daily entries brief, so I'll shut up now. Tomorrow's will be shorter, I promise!

Long Hot Summer

2005-07-14T17:30:00.000-05:00

I can finally see why Canadians put up with the five-month snowstorm they laughingly call ‘winter’. Their summers are absolutely incredible. It's not just the fact that the thermometer hasn't dipped below 30° these last two weeks. It's also the lush green surroundings, the expanses of sparkling water, and the countless fun things to do that make Canadian summers so legendary.

[Right: By Lake Ontario, where most people spend the summer]

Joe and I have been spending our weekends househunting in a local town called Grimsby. This, as I've probably mentioned, is a far cry from the stinky northern English fishing port that shares its name. It's nestled at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment, which is completely unmarked by roads or houses so it looks like there's a giant green tidal wave constantly about to engulf the town. There's a very old-fashioned feel about the place and everyone's really friendly. It's in the middle of miles and miles of peach orchards and vineyards, where you can pick your own fruit for not much money at all. And if it all gets a bit too twee, there's only a twenty minute drive to the nearest bar or cinema! Sorted!!

Hanging out in Grimsby when the sun is shining is pretty close to heaven. Between houses last weekend, we went and picked our own cherries and then ate them under some trees. I sat there in the dappled shade thinking how ludicrously sweet and juicy the cherries were, when Joe woke me from my stupor by deciding to have a pip-spitting contest in my direction. I ran around trying to avoid the projectiles, screaming and laughing. It was the happiest I'd been in ages.

[Left: vineyard with escarpment in background. Paradise.]

I've already banged on about the value of houses in Canada, so I won't bore you any more. But just have a quick look at this one (for the price of a one-bedroom flat in central London...) http://www.venturehomes.ca/ShowTour.asp?TourID=2743

So weekends have been pretty great lately. Which makes weekdays in Hamilton seem all the more depressing. There's no greenery here. No fruit trees. No small-town feel. Just decaying buildings, and fumes from the steel factories, and every other person you walk past a reminder of the grinding poverty that blights the place (I'm having a creative writing day - can you tell?). I would seriously say, though, that at least one in four of the people I walk past is on alcohol or drugs, stricken by poverty or homelessness, physically or mentally disabled, or morbidly obese.

[Right: some of the many decaying buildings in the city centre]

It was all starting to get me a bit down. It didn't really help that I was getting seriously bored. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and volunteer at the local homeless shelter. I've only done one morning so far, so I've yet to see how it goes, but I'll keep you posted. As promised, I've also applied for a job at a local convenience store. Aiming high!!! (Oh well, it’s only part time so I can still do freelance stuff).

[Left: breakfast at the shelter. This is the main thing I'll be helping with]

Another thing I wanted to mention was the Canadian response to everything that happened in London. Whenever I speak to anyone (whether or not I know them), they say to me: “Oh, you're British? I'm really sorry about the bombings in London. Did you know anyone there?” The fact that complete strangers would inquire after my family and friends is something I find really touching. On top of that, every single official building I've walked or driven past has had its flag at half-mast. When you realise the country you've moved to is showing solidarity with the country you've left, it gives you a really warm feeling inside.

Anyway, enough of the slush. I keep saying to myself that I'm going to update this blog more often with briefer entries, so I'll try to do that starting this week. If you don't see anything in the next couple of days, give me a swift kick in the butt by email. Thanks!

Missing London

2005-07-06T23:06:00.000-05:00

Sorry if my blog isn't particularly humour-packed today. I woke up to find frantic emails from all my friends asking everyone else if they were okay. After about the fifth one I started getting worried, so I checked the BBC website. And there it was. Now thirty people are dead, and there's carnage all over London, where I was having such a good time just 2 days ago.

Seeing stuff like that really makes me miss the place. I know I'm not London's biggest fan, but I felt so proud when it won the Olympics (just yesterday - thanks to Al-Qaeda for bringing us back to sobriety), and I had a really good time seeing all my family and friends there. On my last day I had a few hours free, so I hopped on the Tube and took in some of London's more multicultural bits. In just half an hour I travelled from markets selling plantain in Brixton to corner shops selling ghee in Tower Hamlets. If I'd had time I could have gone and had some lahmacun (Turkish pizza) in Tottenham or baklava in Edgware Road. I can't think of anywhere else on earth (except possibly Toronto) you can do that.

[Right: Brixton market. Okay, so it looks like a landfill, but it sells pretty interesting stuff]

So that's why I backed the bid at the last minute - because London really does have a lot going for it. All it really needs is a big injection of cash and organisation, and better policing, and to knock everything down and replan the city from scratch... okay, so that's a lot. But I think the Olympics could make sure at least some of that gets done.

Sigh. So like I said, I had a really good time in my last few days in Britain. I hung out with Kitsch in Sync and sang 'Fame'; I went to a sleepover in Oxford with my uni friends (Rach, Marta and Jo) and consumed far too much grease and sugar - and sang along to 'Phantom of the Opera'; and then there was my old friend Kate's wedding in Bournemouth, where I consumed far too much of everything and killed my ankles on the dancefloor while headbanging and singing myself hoarse. So, a general pattern of singing and over-consumption then. It rocked!!!

[Left: the result of being slightly tipsy and having access to a dancefloor. Fatal combination]

I love rushing around and seeing everyone and being constantly busy. It makes me feel like I have purpose. Now I'm back in Canada, I feel as aimless as I did before I left. I keep asking myself what I'm doing here, and the only answer I can come up with is: "Because Joe's here." Which is a perfectly valid reason - and I do love Canada. But neither Joe nor patriotism can fill up my days. Which is why I need a job.

So watch this space - hopefully within a few weeks I'll either be a snazzy media babe or working in a convenience store. Either way it'll be nice to earn some dosh.

Anyway, that's it for now. One last thought - looking at the news this morning, I was all too aware that this kind of thing will probably never happen to Canada. We just don't matter enough in international affairs. In one sense that's good. In another sense, it proves my theory that whenever you stick your neck out, you're going to get attacked. England stuck its neck out, whether right or wrong in retrospect, and now it's facing the consequences. Canada has no guts on the international scene, therefore it's safe. I think I admire England more.

On the road again

2005-06-30T10:12:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm back in England (again). And having a completely excellent time (again!). How come places are so much more fun when you're just visiting them? I guess because you don't have time to get bored and you don't have any responsibility. Now if I could just find a job that involves flitting from one country to another...but then there is something to be said for home, and I guess I have to grow up at some stage (boo).

But for now England is great. I don't mean the country itself - I arrived to find that 1,000 of its commuters had been locked in overheated trains for most of the previous evening - but my friends and family. At some hideously early hour on Sunday I flew to see my Dad in France. It was a complete surprise for him and he spent the rest of my visit there in shock, but we still had a great time.

[Right: Ten minutes before I took this photo, Dad thought I was in Canada. Hence the look on his face]

My Dad and stepmum run a B & B (check it out: http://www.dufreche.com/), as well as a vineyard and small menagerie (they've got dogs, cats, horses, chickens, and they're thinking of getting geese and ducks). Their property is huge and includes a large lake. It's in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but only a car's drive away from fresh supplies of wine and cheese.

The result? French heaven. We had a birthday lunch for Dad on Sunday with our French neighbours (and some English ones) in the sun in the back garden. When we got so hot we couldn't take it any more, we all headed to the lake to cool off (below). Except the French neighbours who went to milk their cows.

The next day they showed us how it was done. They've got 24 cows and, with the help of a machine that milks 8 of them at a time, they can get the whole job done in about half an hour. So we stood there and watched these cows' udders in absolute fascination, asking about the Common Agricultural Policy in pidgin French and trying not to breathe through our noses. It was brilliant fun in a totally weird way.

[Left: me and my stepmum in her & Dad's field. Yes, they live in a Constable painting]

We also did all the stuff we usually do at Dad's - ate large amounts of gorgeous food, sunbathed, and did karaoke. And I got to ride my Dad's tractor (below)! I could have stayed there forever.

But instead I allowed myself to be herded back to 'London' Stansted by Ryanair (whoever thinks East Anglia is anywhere near London needs a serious geography lesson). And yesterday I sampled the delights of Redhill (pronounced 'Red-eww' by the hoodie-wearing locals) with my friend Ele who I hadn't seen in ages. We had a great time scouring the charity shops, although we managed to resist the lure of Argos and Primark (I can only handle so much pink velour and 9-carat gold earrings).

[L-R: Nick, Ele and Stu at E&S's house in Redhill. I spent many happy evenings there when I was studying "meeja" at the local college]

I recently read a book called 'Crap Towns', listing the 100 worst towns in England. Redhill wasn't in there, which surprised me. But we did manage to walk through there without being bumped into, mugged or verbally abused, which makes it the Emerald City in comparison with a lot of English towns. Like Basingstoke, which you really shouldn't visit without an emergency supply of Prozac.

It's funny - a lot of Canadians think England is a mixture of Pride and Prejudice, Notting Hill and Austin Powers-style 1960s London. They think it's beautiful and charming and the quality of life is incredible. They get such a shock when I tell them our apartment in Ladbroke Grove cost $700,000 and still had human crap in the stairwell. If Hugh Grant ran a failing travel bookshop in real life, that's where he'd be living, not some quaint little houselet in Portobello Road.

Well, anyway. For now England is great - I can whizz around, see all my friends, eat too much food, hardly sleep, and generally have the time of my life. And then I get to go back to Canada. What more could I ask?

Ice cream till I'm blue in the face

2005-06-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

Er...yes, I appear to have completely skipped last week's blog. Sorry to disappoint you avid blog-checkers out there! Actually I've been consumed in a tidal wave of admin this past week, so it wouldn't have been hugely exciting anyway (Day 2: spent the day logging receipts for our tax return. Woohoo!). So what else has been going on?

I did go to a press conference with some Latin American bishops the other weekend, which was pretty cool (my first press conference!). It was for an article I was writing for the Spectator about social injustice in El Salvador. It would have been even cooler if they'd actually printed the article!!! I've yet to find out what happened, but it was pretty annoying considering this is the only way I'm making any money at the moment.

People keep asking me if I'm working yet (or when I meet new people, it's that perennial question "So what do you do?"). My clever answer is 'Yes - but not for money' (apart from the Spec stuff). Because the truth is, I feel like I've been working pretty hard these last couple of weeks. If you want to break it down into job titles, I'm:

A freelance journalist
An editor
My husband's secretary
A data inputter
A cleaner
A cook
An actress
A communications officer
An immigration officer

Just to explain the last three: I'm now a communications person at my church, which mostly involves sending out lots of emails; I've been sorting things out like my social insurance and NHS (well, the Canadian equivalent - Medicare) numbers, all part of settling in as an immigrant; and I've had 3 auditions in the last 2 weeks, hence the actress part.

By the way, I got a part in Guys and Dolls! Yay!!! It's like, third female chorus from the left or something, but it is my first play in Canada and it'll be a good way to meet people anyway. Plus I auditioned for the church drama team, but I won't know the result for a couple of weeks.

So life is pretty busy at the moment. But that didn't stop us from exploring a bit of Canada last weekend. We went to a place overlooking Lake Ontario, surrounding by deep blue lakes and lush woodland. Joe and I, along with all Joe's high school friends, their wives and multiple children, stayed in tiny cottages along the edge of a beautiful private lake.

Because all our cottages were next to each other, and we spent the evenings gathered around the campfire roasting marshmallows and playing the guitar, it kind of reminded me of guide camp (except we sang U2 instead of 'campfire's burning'). Plus we spent more time playing with the kids than talking to the adults. It was great!

When we weren’t eating blue ice cream in scoops the size of a baby’s head, I was chasing the kids around pretending to be a chimp, or Joe was climbing a tree because the kids dared him, or we were getting tipsy on free samples at the local winery (ok, so that was an adult thing).

Sunday was the best part. We went for a walk with Joe’s high school friend and his wife, and their two little boys aged 4 and 6. I love kids at that age (they remind me of Calvin from ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ – it’s a cartoon. If you haven’t read it, your life is missing something). We spent the whole afternoon chasing dragonflies, avoiding poison ivy (like stinging nettles but way worse), finding turtles and looking at snakes. Yes, really! Canadian wildlife is so cool. The turtles weren’t just terrapins – they were about a foot long! And the snakes weren’t just grass snakes – they were two or three feet long! Massive!!

Anyway, I’d been fishing with Nicholas (the 4 year old) earlier in the day, and he kept catching seaweed. Every time I took it off the hook for him, he’d say ‘Eat it!’ (he was the same kid who dared Joe to climb the tree). For some reason, eating seaweed to win the eternal admiration of a 4 year old is strangely tempting.

As it turned out, I won all my kudos later in the afternoon when we were snake-watching. I love the feel of snakes, so after being assured they weren’t poisonous, I picked one up. And it bit me!! How cool is that?!?! Not only did it bite me, I hung on to it long enough to get a photo. I still have the bite mark on my hand, but it’s healing annoyingly fast. Plus it looks like I’ve just stapled myself.

After all the excitement with the snake, we had to start heading home. I stuck my head into the car to say goodbye to the kids, and just as I was leaving, the six year old said:

“Bye, Suzie. That was pretty cool with the snake.”

And my day was made. Who needs seaweed?

2005-06-21T13:01:00.000-05:00

If you look really closely, you can see miniature puncture wounds on my right hand...

Eh to zed

2005-06-07T15:37:00.000-05:00

By the way, you might have noticed I used the Canadian 'eh?' in my previous entry. I apologise profusely. I'm trying to resist the temptation to use 'like' every other word and other awful North Americanisms, but it's pretty hard sometimes. So feel free to sharpen your torture instruments for the next time you see me if I use any of the following:

Eh?
Like
Totally
Awesome
Whatever
Kinda
Y'know

Words such as 'rocked' are acceptable if used ironically, as is 'cool' because it's, like, my signature word (oh crap! I can hear those racks being dragged out of the closet - I mean wardrobe). However you may report me to the UN for crimes against humanity if you hear me utter sentences such as:

Hot enough for ya?
How about them Leafs, eh? (unlikely as all the ice hockey teams are on strike)
That was like, totally awesome!
Y'know what, I'm kinda bummed about that - but whatever.
Maple syrup rocks! (Even though it does)

Despite all these efforts though, I can feel the cloak of Canadianisation falling upon me like a giant maple leaf (I wish that sounded more sinister). Just kill me quickly if I start to lose my accent.

Mad men and the midday sun

2005-06-07T15:10:00.000-05:00

Ah, that’s better. It’s amazing how good I feel after belting out a few songs. The auditions went pretty well - although some of these drama companies don’t half take themselves seriously. At the one on Sunday, the audition form asked if I was a member of Equity (the actors’ union)! The next question should have been ‘If so, why are you trying out for an amateur production?’ I guess some professional actors are pretty desperate. Kind of like professional journalists who write for free. Moving on then…

Spring here lasted about five minutes and summer has arrived with a vengeance. It’s BOILING!!! And the temperature’s going to be 26 degrees or hotter for at least the next seven days. It’s not just the heat, either. It’s also the humidity, which clings to you like a cheap shower curtain and makes things like wearing makeup unbearable. You know when you’ve just eaten a really greasy hamburger and you can feel the fat around your mouth? Pretty gross, eh? That’s the same as wearing lipstick in a Canadian summer.

Needless to say I’m wearing fewer clothes at the moment, which in itself is unremarkable until you consider the number of weird guys that hang around downtown Hamilton. There are a lot. Some of them have problems with mental illness or learning disabilities or addictions (there are lots of halfway houses around here), and others are letches with no excuse. I get a ‘hello’, or ‘how are you’, or ‘you look nice’ about three or four times a day. I even caught a blind guy checking me out yesterday! I was so confused by this I looked directly at him and yes, he was definitely checking me out. He must have had a white cane because he was partially sighted or something.

It’s only when they try to start up a full-length conversation that I feel kind of awkward. But most of the time it’s all pretty friendly. Like when I was going for a walk between the singing and dance auditions yesterday, and some guy pulled up next to me on his bike and asked me out!! I guess people are just less inhibited here. Plus I’m a babe : )

But seriously. People are more friendly here. And because people are more friendly, I find myself being more friendly back. If somebody bumped into me in London, on the rare occasion they said sorry, I would just mumble “s’okay” in response. If somebody bumps into me here, they politely say “I’m sorry” (no mumbling) and I say back “That’s no problem” or something equally warm and forgiving. People here assume you’re a fantastic person worthy of respect unless they find out you’re a mugger or a thief. In London it’s the other way around.

People will also happily help you out if you need it, whereas in London a stranger wouldn’t pee on you if your heart was on fire (one Londoner I know told me about a woman she saw on the bus, who was crying her heart out and everyone was ignoring her. It turned out she’d just been raped). Today I was loading my groceries into the back of the car, and some guy offered to take back my trolley for me. I assumed he was doing it to make some sort of living (you get your 25 cents deposit back when you return the trolley), so I let him. Then he gave me the 25 cents!!!

An apology to Londoners, by the way. I have seen examples of Londoners being warm-hearted, generous people who help out strangers. It’s just that those examples are in the minority. I’ve been just as guilty of putting my own comfort ahead of helping other people, but I think being around Canadians is making me less reserved.

Anyway, as any person who’s ever been around English people will tell you, an English friend is a friend for life. And I do miss my English friends. Although I’m meeting people here, and I know that one day I’ll have as many laughs and stupid antics with them as I’ve had with my old friends, it sometimes seems a long way off. So to everyone I know in England (and to my dad & step mum in France)…I miss you. Have a hug from me : )

Name change

2005-06-02T18:02:00.000-05:00

By the way, you might have noticed that I've changed the name of my blog. The address is still the same though!! I just wanted to jazz up the name a bit, because 'Can do Canada' was such an unbelievably anaemic title. Till next week then (and wish me luck in the auditions!).

Feels like Ladbroke Grove

2005-06-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

More pieces added to the jigsaw of my life in Canada this week. I've decided to audition for a musical, I've got a bit more work with the Hamilton Spectator, and I've volunteered for the drama group at church. Plus I might be doing some English teaching, seeing as the classes take place next door so it would almost be lazy not to, but that's only voluntary so the jury's out on that one.

It’s weird - it sounds like there’s loads of stuff going on, and there will be soon, but for now it’s still really quiet. Even when I’ve got work on, I’m doing it from home, so for much of the day I’m stuck in our very small flat. Which is in a tower block, on a noisy street full of screaming kids, with litter and dog poo on the street outside. And I swear I saw pee in the stairwell just now. Ah, it feels like I’m back in Ladbroke Grove. The only difference being that living in Ladbroke Grove costs about $1500 (Canadian) more a month : )

Anyway, it’s only temporary so I can’t complain. Plus I discovered this week that our neighbours are Turkish, and (although it lags far far behind English) Turkish is my second language! Not many people can say that so the neighbours love me. I’ve already been invited over for Turkish coffee (mmm...coffee you can stand your spoon in…)

Plus we’ve seen some great houses we could potentially move into. One is right on the edge of the escarpment that overlooks Hamilton, and the view is incredible! It’s got 3 bedrooms, a dining room, living room, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and a basement, and it’s overpriced (yes really) at 125,000 pounds. We reckon we can knock ‘em down to 115. I love this country!

The weather is also getting incredibly lovely here. It’s about 25 degrees C every day and sunny. I’m getting a tan just walking around (me! A tan!). So despite the slight lack of things to do (and that won’t last for long) life is good. Especially as I get to belt out a tune or two at the auditions next week : ) Watch out Canada, there’s a diva on the loose!

27 and all grown up

2005-05-25T13:12:00.000-05:00

Well, I don't know about the grown-up part, but it was my birthday last Saturday so now I'm a year closer to 30 (which is when I'll probably have kids - help! Three years left of my own life!!!).

As I said before, Canadians will celebrate absolutely anything, and this included my birthday : ) The whole family came round for dinner, and I got presents and a cake and everything! All we needed was goodie bags and I would have felt five again : )

Another random Canadian celebration is Victoria Day. When I said I had no idea what this was, people here were pretty surprised - it's actually the Queen of England's birthday! So it's pretty weird that Brits have no idea when it is, let alone celebrate it. Honestly, we're such a dour, party-less lot. But here in Canada we had fireworks and more cake and a day off last Monday! So it was a pretty good weekend all round.

Other than that, not a whole lot has been happening. I was housebound with a pretty harsh cold for most of last week, and because we had Monday off this week has been slow to get going (although I have written another article - but this one's for the free paper so it's not paid).

So it's a pretty short blog today (collective sigh of relief). I'm working on getting more stories/a job, but both are kind of slow in coming so I'm a bit bored. Oh well - if anything life-changing happens I'll be sure to let you know!

The mother in law

2005-05-16T20:30:00.000-05:00

I've done my usual thing of not posting on the blog for ages, then spewing out five sides of A4 when I do get round to it. Sorry. So I thought I'd break this entry into two parts.

Previously on Suzie's blog... I mentioned my parents in law. These guys are great. I stayed with them for six days last week while Joe was on business in Germany. Although most of our evenings were spent in front of the TV, it was so nice to be part of a functional family where there's a mum and dad and they actually speak to each other and talk about mundane things.

And boy, does my mother in law know how to talk. Even if we're just sitting in front of the TV, it's not enough to just sit there and watch it. Oh no. That would mean silence. We have to conduct a conversation while I try and work out what's happening on CSI (which isn't difficult considering every episode's the same). If the conversation is about the TV show, my MIL will either (a) ask me what's happening, even though we've been watching exactly the same show for exactly the same amount of time, or (b) tell me what's happening, even though we've been watching exactly the same show for exactly the same amount of time ("Oh, so he just shot her." "Yes, ma. I kind of got that impression from the way blood is spurting from a bullet-shaped wound in her head.")

But these are superficialities. As a person my MIL is one of the warmest, huggiest people you could meet. She also makes great food, even if she does convince herself that it's healthy ("the meat's not really fried." "Yes it is, ma. You put it in a pan with oil. Then you heated it up."). I feel like I can tell her anything, and ask her any question (like "Is it possible for you to talk to me while you're driving without weaving between lanes?" Answer: no). She's my Canadian-Italian mum and I love her to bits.

The day after I got back to Hamilton (along with Joe), my article was published in the Hamilton Spectator! On the front page!!!! There, sandwiched between a whacking great photo of one of my interviewees and the article itself, was my byline: "by Suzie Chiodo." On the front page!!! And, because I'm a permanent resident now, I'll be getting paid soon (cha-ching!). From now on, in the words of Yazz, the only way is up.

I am a Canadian

2005-05-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

Well, sort of. I'm finally a permanent resident of Canada! That means I can live here, work here, whatever. I'm not a citizen, but I can become one in about three years (giving me triple nationality - English, American and Canadian). Pretty much the only thing I'm not allowed to do till then is vote.

Those who are Canadian get to vote about once a year, thanks to the incredibly shaky nature of Canadian politics (there's a minority government in power at the moment). The choice isn't that great. We have:

Liberals
Centre-left, slightly more lefty than Labour in the UK. They're the ones in power, and because they need the support of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois (see below) to stay there, plus the votes of the countless interest groups round the country, they spend most of the time giving people what they want rather than actually governing. Kind of like a parent who has no idea how to raise their kids, so just gives them everything they want to shut them up.

Conservatives
I'd be tempted to vote for these guys, except the leader (Stephen Harper) resembles a tele-evangelist. They also have no clear agenda - but then none of the other parties do, so that's no biggie. They have done the very un-PC thing of opposing gay marriage, which gives them some sort of backbone. I like that.

NDP
Known in Ontario as the 'the party which banned the word Christmas'. When Ontario had an NDP premier (PM rules the country, premiers rule the provinces), it was all 'holiday trees' and 'seasons greetings'. Most people I've spoken to have never quite forgiven them for that, and seeing as Ontario is Canada's most populated province, the party doesn't really stand a chance. Fine with me.

Bloc Quebecois
Sorry, I made a mistake in saying none of the parties have an agenda. The BQ does have an agenda - to destroy Canada as we know it (ie separate). Seeing as Quebec needs constant nappy-changing by the government just to keep unemployment stats from going off the counter, I hardly see how it could function as an independent nation. But whatever. Most non-Quebecers have a deep mistrust of the BQ - and it doesn't help that its leader looks like Eric Idle's evil twin.

Because the above parties spend most of the time bickering between themselves, it comes as no great surprise that Canadians aren't really interested in politics. But they do love Canada. Not in an arrogant 'Canada is better than everywhere else' kind of way - they're just happy to live here. The immigrants feel the same, as I found out in my roving reporter role. There's little feeling of discontent, or being hard done by, or being excluded, like I sometimes sensed in Britain. Newcomers are often poor, but then they save money and move to a nicer place, and their children go to university and get highly-paid jobs. It's simply easier to make it in Canada, and immigrants seem to feel the same as everyone else here. They know Canada is more beautiful, spacious, plentiful and friendly than most other places on the planet.

And I'd have to agree. The other day I was at my parents-in-law's house (their parents came from Italy after the war without a penny to their names). It's custom-built, has three huge bedrooms, two bathrooms, a massive garden with rocks and a waterfall, and a deck outside where you can stick chairs and tables. I was sitting on that deck watching the sun set over Lake Ontario, ruminating on the fact that this beautiful house cost the same as our crappy ex-council in Ladbroke Grove with human crap in the stairwell, and I thought 'I love this place.' I'm part of a close-knit, warm Italian-Canadian family with big hugs and great food and I feel like I belong. Just thinking about it makes me want to kiss the ground : )

Run for their lives

2005-05-05T20:50:00.000-05:00

This is a slightly unprecedented midweek entry, but there's a reason for that. Today is May 5th (or at least it is in this time zone). That means today is my mum's birthday. She would have been 55, but she died of cancer 13 years ago.

So why am I telling you all this? First of all, moving to a new country throws up a lot of emotional stuff and that includes grief. Lately I've been thinking about my mum a lot. Since I've been here I've had at least three dreams about her still being alive.

Secondly, although I've been thinking about raising money for cancer research for years, this year I've decided to actually do it. So here's what I'm going to do:

Remember Terry Fox? He's the guy who ran halfway across Canada with one leg before dying of lung cancer. Well, every year in Canada they do something called the Terry Fox run. It's really a series of local fun runs, only about 10km, and anyone can participate to raise money for cancer research. It takes place in September and I'm going to run it.

This is where you come in. I need sponsors! My target is to raise 5000 Canadian dollars, but I think we can do better than that. I know September seems miles away, but all you have to do is click on the link below, pledge some money, and then forget about it until I email you after the run demanding the cash : )

Here's the link: http://www.terryfoxrun.org/ENRunner/default.asp?s=1&RunnerID=13205

Click against cancer! Do it now! (please)

Photos!

2005-05-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

By the way, I've now put photos next to my earlier blog entries (February and March)! Take a look and see the face of Canadian life...!

Driven to Desperation

2005-05-03T21:41:00.000-05:00

Just a quick one this week, as I'm trying to finish my articles for Friday, and that's pretty much all I've been working on so there's not a whole lot else to report. Although trying to find out about the immigrant community here has been an experience - I've interviewed a Buddhist monk, a mad Vietnamese woman, a Filipino nurse, a Laotian pastor, and various Sikh, Hindu and Muslim leaders.

What I've found out is that newcomers here are willing to work hard, settle in, and call Canada their home while keeping hold of their own culture. Most of them moved here for a better quality of life and more opportunities, and are continually grateful that they can have those things. It all seemed to be pretty positive - it left me wondering what newcomers to Britain would say about their experiences.

Speaking from my own viewpoint, I've found there generally is more opportunity here. I've only spoken to two or three editors, but their attitude seems to be: “We’ll let you show us what you can do,” rather than “Why should we let you work for us?” as I’ve found with some of the bigger British newspapers. Here, it's not so much who you know as what you know. Which is good for me cos I've got a big brain and no friends : )

Although that's changing. Last night I hung out with a few people from my home group, including one girl who grew up in northern Ontario. It's pretty rural up there, and she had some great stories about ‘Deliverance’-style inbreds with extra thumbs, missing arms and scabies (eww!). Her dad was a headmaster and often had to make visits to pupils’ homes. On approaching one house, he looked up to the second-floor window to see a horse staring back at him. When he knocked on the door, a woman answered and he told her what he'd seen.

She sighed in exasperation. “Did thayt horse git’n here agin?”

I also had a chance to give my paranoid backwoods yokel impression (“Ahm nawt payin’ ma taxes!” okay, you had to be there) which went down a storm. It’s weird that stuff I say without thinking is absolutely hilarious to Canadians. But hey, anything for a laugh.

Speaking of which, there was a glimmer of hilarity in my perpetually boring driving lessons the other day. To punctuate his monotonous drone, our teacher occasionally sticks on a cheaply made and hideously dated video about road safety. Last Thursday he excelled himself.

The video was presented by someone who'd obviously decided his nipples needed the support of his belt and wearing polo necks was cool and masculine. He'd say things like: “But Patrice, how do I control my car during a skid?” and “The human brain is like a powerful computer” (followed by a shot of a machine that filled the entire room and looked like a cross between an 8-track and a spaceship).

His narrative on how to overtake was accompanied by hilarious Atari style graphics and beeps that got faster as the cars sped up. Every now and again a ‘scientific’ looking diagram would come up showing how drivers’ brains worked, with flashing red and blue arrows labeled ‘input’, ‘processing’ and ‘output’. The best bit was when the presenter started driving round a racing circuit with a huge flashing contraption on his head, with absolutely no explanation of what it was for.

Anyway, for those of us who’d been sitting in a classroom for 4 hours (yes, lessons are that long), it was hilarious. Unfortunately we've had nothing but blackboard drawings and bits read out of books since then. Still, there's only one lesson to go and then it’s cheaper insurance, here I come! Now I just have to move out of the car crime capital of the country…

Bhangra and barbies

2005-04-26T10:31:00.000-05:00

I've finally decided that Canadians, contrary to what I first thought, do appreciate my sense of humour. They just laugh at different stuff. Like my tendency to put on different voices when I'm making fun of myself or other people. We made friends the other day with a couple who'd visited England, and we bonded over jokes about Chavs. My Chav impression goes something like this:

“So I said to Trice, ahm not ‘avin it, y’know wha’ I mean? Cos like, she’s a complete cah, an a filfy slaig, so like, ahm not pu’n’ up wiv it, know wha’ I mean?”

We also had a laugh about inner-city schoolboys:

“Imk omk um mfcm im ump oom immk emp mb ump, innit?”

Whenever I catch myself sounding old-fashioned, I put on my mock old person's voice (which comes out Bristolian because that's where my grandparents are from), which also has everyone in stitches. So now I know what makes them laugh, I can make the right jokes! Everyone's happy!

We met the aforementioned couple last Saturday night, at a party thrown by a used-car dealer Joe works with. You would have thought a party thrown by a used-car dealer would have fake beer and two cakes iced together to look like one (not to mention the clock wound back so everyone thinks it’s earlier!), but this was actually a really good bash.

It started off with lots of curry (the dealer's from India), then a prize draw (in which we won a faux Greek urn…what’s a Greek urn? Ooh, about 10,000 drachmas a year… *canned laughter*), then they stuck on the Bhangra and we hit the dancefloor. It was great! Everyone just danced in their own bizarre way and didn't care what anyone else thought. And in fact dancing to Bhangra is easy. I used a combination of four moves:

1. A variation of ‘Walk like an Egyptian’
2. A variation of the hula dance
3. Hanging up the laundry
4. Screwing in a lightbulb

The next day we went to see an incredibly distant relative who my uncle had found by researching the family tree. Okay, this is how friendly Canadians are: I was the great great-granddaughter of her great-grandfather, and she hugged us both as soon as we walked in the door! I felt like her niece rather than her fourth cousin several times removed.

It turned out her husband was a champion barbecuer so dinner was pretty good. Then later he regaled us with all his hog roast exploits. He'd actually been to Lynchburg, Tennessee for the Jack Daniels World Barbecue Championships (yee-haa!), and his stories involved suspicious amounts of beer considering Lynchburg is a dry county. With his love of simple pleasures and his bizarre pride in schoolboy pranks like nicking a Jack Daniels figurine (‘we stoled it’), he reminded me of where I grew up in Bournemouth. I think that's a good thing.

One thing that struck me about their house was their bathroom. Bathrooms in England sometimes have a hand towel (if you're lucky) with a little scrappy bar of soap to wash your hands with, and they often need a good clean. Canadian bathrooms are immaculate. The towels match, they’re all hung neatly, and you never have to dry your hands on someone's manky bath towel. The soap is in liquid form in beautiful bottles that smell of jasmine and aloe vera. Sometimes there's even moisturiser. There’s candles, baskets of pot pourri, and everything’s shiny. It's like I’ve died and gone to the loo. I love Canadian bathrooms.

Talking of dying (stay with me, readers), I had to interview a funeral director on Friday (for Grimsby/Niagara, not the Hamilton Spectator). I got a tour round the funeral home and everything. It was fun in a creepy kind of way. I even got to pick my casket (I chose the maple one – what a patriot!), and if I really wanted to go the Canadian way I could have chosen a maple-leaf adorned box for my ashes. I suppose you could even be embalmed in maple syrup if you wanted. Sorry for sounding flippant – but I find it hard to talk about death without either joking about it or getting sad. And who wants a tear-stained blog?

Finally, this afternoon I’m off to my third Canadian driving lesson. The ridiculous thing is I already have a licence, but I have to get lessons in Canada to bring my outrageous insurance costs down. Anyway, it’s all pretty fun. There are only about three of us in the theory class, including one girl who lives in the same apartment block as me, and I keep everyone entertained with tales of English driving. Like thick London bus drivers who block the intersection so traffic coming the other way can’t move. Or taxi drivers who do U-turns in Zone 1 at rush hour (in Canada you’re supposed to wait until no traffic is coming in either direction. In London you’d be waiting till the next Ice Age!).

The thing that really makes me laugh is when they start going on about the cost of stuff. The instructor said we should take the bus into downtown Hamilton because parking is “very expensive”. Let’s get things into perspective here. Downtown London: 1 pound for 20 minutes = 3 pounds an hour. Downtown Hamilton: 50 cents an hour = 20p!!!! And fuel (or gas)? UK: 90p a litre (if you’re lucky). Canada: 80 cents a litre = 30p!

I love telling people all this because it makes them more appreciative of where they live. Everyone thinks their place is a hole until someone tells them of somewhere worse. And heck, even in England, at least we don’t have to walk a day to the nearest well and we’re not about to get hacked to death with machetes. Unlike in Rwanda or Sudan. But does the UN do anything about it? No! (Sorry, I watched Hotel Rwanda last night). Beats me why everyone thinks the UN is the solution to everyone’s problems. If by ‘solution’ you mean ‘stand by and watch’, then yes, I suppose they are. Anyway, I’m starting to rant now, and I have to go anyway. We’re off to look at some amazingly cheap houses : )

Hacks and Tax

2005-04-18T17:56:00.000-05:00

This city is seriously growing on me. Not only am I starting to get something resembling a life (with these funny people I know called ‘friends’), but the Hamilton Spectator liked my stuff!!!!! So now I’m officially a freelance journalist, and my first article will be on the experience of South Asian immigrants to Hamilton. And the best part? I’m getting paid!!!!!!!!!! My first paid article! I’m so excited!!!!!!

I found out last Friday, and that evening we went to see ‘Saint Ralph’, a movie set in Hamilton. I was so proud to see my city up on the big screen, and practically stood up and cheered when the lead character appeared in the paper, which was of course the Hamilton Spectator! The paper I write for – in a movie!!! How cool is that????

Anyway, the subject of the film is a teenage boy who thinks he can bring his mother out of a coma by running the Boston Marathon. Canadians have a thing about long-distance runners. They haven’t had much luck with the sprinters (remember Ben Johnson?), but they’re great at dogged determination. This month marks 25 years since Terry Fox, a 21-year-old who’d lost a leg to bone cancer, ran halfway across Canada to raise money for cancer research (http://www.terryfoxrun.org/). He’s the archetypal Canadian hero. The really sad bit is the fact that he couldn’t run the whole way because the cancer returned, this time to his lungs. He died aged 22. Call me over-sentimental, but I love hero stories and I always cry at cancer stories. Seems Canadians are the same – Terry Fox joins the Queen on their two-dollar coin this year.

Sigh…I’m getting sad now. I’ll talk about my new friends, that’ll cheer us all up. They’re mostly from home group, our church’s weekly Bible study that we have at someone’s house. Last Wednesday was the first time we really stuck around and talked to people afterwards. I met a really cool artist, an animator, someone who’s going on a mission trip to San Francisco, and an IT guy and his wife (can’t remember what she does, but she makes excellent chocolate peanut butter goo – I think they were supposed to be balls but the weather’s getting pretty warm now). Canadians are great – they’re so direct, no pussyfooting around, which is handy when it comes to making friends. The artist woman just came up to me and said “I’d like to get to know you and your husband better.” Yay – life’s too short (see above) to faff around with meaningless pleasantries.

The only problem I have with the home group is the actual Bible study part. The group is dominated by students who appear to have been raised by surfers. It’s like the Bible according to Bill and Ted. At one point, we were talking about who we thought Jesus was:

“He’s a dude,” someone piped up (I think he was joking. Please say he was).

“He’s, like, totally awesome?” said another (who definitely wasn’t joking. He also spoke like he was constantly asking a question, the way a lot of Canadians do). “I think the sermon on Sunday was, like, totally right on. It just totally shows that, like, Jesus is who he said he was?”

And so on, with me trying to strain a meaningful sentence from the mass of filler words: “like”, “y’know”, “totally”, “just”, “really” – and let’s not forget “awesome” (pronounced “awesiiim”). Honestly, if it wasn’t for the location I would have said they were high.

Oh well – like I said earlier Canada is a totally excellent place (great, now they’ve got me started) and Hamilton is feeling more and more like home. It just has one or two down sides. Tax, for example. Okay, so this is a down side to everywhere – but in England, if you work for someone, you don’t have to think twice about taxes except the massive chunk they take out of your payslip. Here you have to do an annual tax return whoever you are!! Can’t wait till next April. I’ll probably do a Homer Simpson and desperately fill the form out at the last minute:

Homer: “Okay, if anyone asks, Maggie is a nun, Lisa needs 24-hour care and Bart is a Vietnam war veteran.”

Bart: “Cool!”

But it doesn’t stop there. Joe is officially considered self-employed, and because I do his accounts I also have to think about the unnecessarily numerous and ludicrously complicated levels of taxes: GST, PST, QST, HST, to name a few. Can’t we all just sacrifice our first born sons and have done with it?

If I was truly Canadian I’d go thrash out my frustrations with a good game of ice hockey right now. But as I’ve yet to get round to joining a team (it’s on my ‘to do’ list) I’ve leave you on an upbeat note with another of my published articles:

http://thegrimsbylincolnnews.com/april13_05/aaaGLN_April%2013_pp5-8.pdf

Let me know what you think!

UK today, gone tomorrow...

2005-04-13T17:36:00.000-05:00

A lot of people are under the impression that Canada, being English-speaking and not American, has basically the same culture as England. In some ways this is true. But if you really want to see the differences, move to Canada for 6 weeks and then go back. That's what I did last Wednesday.

I was visiting the UK for a friend's wedding. It was a really short trip (about 4 days), and, what with sleeping only 1 hour on the (night) flight over, it was all a bit disorientating. The first thing I noticed was the space. London is like an overpacked suitcase. There's so little parking that a lot of the roads have cars on either side, so only one car can get through and it takes about ten minutes to negotiate. None of the houses have space between them (unless you're a pop star in Notting Hill, and even then...). There are people everywhere - you can't walk down the street without shoving or being shoved. Living in London is the feeling of constantly being squeezed.

And then there's the prices. 30 dollars for a 15 minute cab ride, and the driver didn't know where Sloane Square was (so much for 'The Knowledge')!!! And how much for a Starbucks? Exsqueez me? 10 bucks for a coffee and a muffin? Were the beans picked under gunfire by mercenaries in Columbia or something? I don't know.

Anyway, I'll leave off the whingeing for a bit. Like I said, I went to Starbucks (in Borders, where they let you read the books for free while you have your coffee - in Canada you have to buy them first, so one up to England there). I knew how Canadian my thinking had become when I tried to calculate the tax on top (let's see...2.99...so that's about 50 cents...). Of course in England it's included. And when I'd finished my coffee, I tried to roll up the rim to see if I'd won anything
(here’s why: http://www.timhortons.com/en/about/marketing.html).

That evening, I went to see Kitsch in Sync rehearse (KIS is the accapella group I was part of in England, and loads of my good friends are from there). It was great to see all the old crowd (I say ‘old’, but it was only 6 weeks since I’d last seen them – it almost felt like I hadn’t been away). By the end of the evening, though, I was seriously tired. I walked out of the pub and saw all the traffic driving down the wrong side of the street, and it took me about 2 minutes to work out why. Switching continents is seriously disorientating!

The next day I met up with my friend Rachel (one of my bridesmaids). We met at Waterloo because that’s where her train came in – of course the trains in Britain are crap so she was late. I could go on forever about the horrendous state of the UK transport network, but instead I’ll just suggest sending hate mail to this address: mayor@london.gov.uk. Okay, so Ken’s only responsible for London, but you need someone to throw the darts at and I can’t think of anyone else (you could try Tony Blair).

Later I met up with my brother (and his fiancée – they seem to be in a perpetual state of engagement) and sister, which was great. The waitress at the restaurant was really friendly (and American – coincidence?). After dinner we tried to find something else to do, and spent absolutely ages trying to find somewhere that was open after 11. The only places we could find were crappy noisy clubs that charged a fiver to get in! There is a serious gap in the London market for things to do after the pubs shut, that don’t involve ecstasy and/or vast amounts of money. What I would have done for a 24 hour Tim Horton’s…

One more whinge point, before all the English people decide never to read my blog again. Is there something in the Londoners’ Bible that says “Thou shalt use thine eyes and facial expression to tell everyone to bugger off out of your way”? People there are seriously unfriendly. Most people let the door slam in your face, and when you hold the door open for them they don’t bother to say “thank you”. And try making conversation with a stranger! They’d sooner do you for harassment than answer you. In a city where everyone lives on top of each other, people have a weird way of wanting to be left alone.

Maybe I’m being slightly unfair. I took a bus to Tottenham Court Road, and the people on it were courteous, helpful and friendly. They gave up their seats for others, helped people onto the bus and said things to strangers (nice things!). So well done, people of the number 19 bus. I have to say though, you’re pretty unusual.

One good thing I’ve noticed about England is it’s beauty (outside London). No matter where on this planet I go, I always come back to England and marvel at its greenery. In contrast to the post-winter brown of Ontario, England looked like someone had spilt food dye everywhere. It was almost neon. And there’s nothing like thatched stone cottages and rolling hills dotted with sheep to bring back your national pride. The village where we had the wedding was especially beautiful, with all the flowers out and people in hats drinking champagne. Even Camilla looked nice (ahahaha…no, of course it wasn’t her wedding. I’m not that tacky, dahlings!).

So, anyway, it was a nice few days away but it’s good to be back in Canada. My husband’s here, half my family are here, we can afford a nice house (even though we haven’t got one yet), there’s loads of space, and strangers are friendly. I was making dinner and watching the sun set over the Hamilton skyline yesterday, and I could actually picture a time when England would be nothing more than a distant memory (although I’ll keep in touch with my friends and family there).

It helps that my career seems to be going pretty well here. Not only have I been published in the Grimsby News (here’s one of my articles: http://thegrimsbylincolnnews.com/april06_05/aaaGLN_Apr6_pp17-20.pdf), but I also had a chat with the managing editor and assistant managing editor at the Hamilton Spectator yesterday (it’s Hamilton’s daily paper, kind of like the Evening Standard is for London)! I’ve got to come up with some suggestions for stories and then they’ll tell me what they think. It could lead to some freelancing!!! Paid journalism here I come!!!

Finally, because I realize this entry is incredibly long, I’ve even managed to find somewhere to sing (without having things thrown at me)! It’s a female barbershop group (don’t laugh) and I went along last night. They’re good. They do paid gigs and competitions and everything. Their harmonies are perfect. Fortunately, after years of singing with Kitsch in Sync, I think I’m up to the challenge. I’d still prefer a musical, though – if I find one soon I’ll do it. I could even do a part that needs an English accent, like Mary Poppins or something. Cool!

Local news for local people

2005-04-05T13:36:00.000-05:00

This is the week I broke into Canadian journalism!!! Okay, my stuff hasn’t actually been published yet, but I’ve filed it so it’s only a matter of days or a week. Yay!!!!!

Local reporters in Canada spend their time a lot differently than their English counterparts. In England, I conducted almost all my interviews on the phone (unless they were those horrendous ‘vox pop’ things where you ask people on the street for their opinions – thank the Lord they don’t do that over here), and a photographer would go out and take the photo.

In Canada, the reporters are also the photographers, and all the interviews are face to face. So reporters are out of the office a lot more, although they still manage to churn out huge amounts of copy (haven’t quite mastered that one yet – I’ve done 4 articles in 2 days!!). This means that journalism is less deskbound and more people-based. The articles are also a lot longer and more feature-y, taking their time and putting in lots more background information.

All this means that Canadian journalism is much more my cup of tea. I love it! The only snag with local journalism is telling people what you do (doctors and lawyers probably find the same thing). People go “Ooh, you could write about this.” Often “this” is of no interest to local people, or completely outside the paper’s geographical area. I write for the Niagara region, but a guy today was telling me about his band in Toronto. How many times?? It’s a local paper for local people!

Having said that, I live in Hamilton which is about 30km away from where my paper’s based. So getting there to do my interviews was pretty hairy. Not only did I do them pretty much in one day, I had to hire a car for that day because I still haven’t bought one! And it was only my second day of driving in Canada! The best bit was when I had to interview a driving instructor – I parked on a hill while she watched (thinking goodness knows what as I scraped and lurched and bumped into the parking space).

But I managed to get all the interviews and return the hire care intact, with no damage to my internal organs and/or bones! So it was a pretty good day.

I pretty much spent the rest of the week writing or helping Joe out with his accounts and stuff. Sleep, once again, has been pretty elusive (totalling about 8 hours in the last 2 nights). I can still function, but in more of a zombified state with only Tim Horton’s standing between me and unconsciousness. Still, at least I can identify with my fellow Hamilton residents, most of whom seem to wander the streets clinging to life by the fingernails.

Talking of clinging to life, the weeping Catholics have been back on TV again with this whole Pope thing. I kind of thought my Italian family would be upset, but no-one even mentioned it. Weird. I guess the older generation have seen so many Popes come and go that this guy’s just one more. For me, it’s my first Pope death, because John Paul II donned his white cap in the year I was born.

Other celebrity events this week include the Canadian music awards, aka the ‘Junos’ – as in ‘Did Juno that _____________ was Canadian?” (fill in blank with Nickelback, Diana Krall, etc). Almost every Canadian who every released a record was honoured on Sunday evening, including Avril Lavigne who swept the board (big surprise there, seeing as she’s one of the few Canadian musicians anyone’s ever heard of. There’s also Celine and Bryan, who probably won Lifetime Achievement Awards or something).

Tomorrow I’ll be flying to England for a brief visit – can’t wait! And then on Sunday it’s back to Canada. I suppose it’s for the best – if I spent weeks on end in the UK, how would I ever get used to life here? Now if I can only figure out how to get all my English friends and family to emigrate...

Canadian Tourist Attractions

2005-04-04T18:11:00.000-05:00

How long have you got? Canada has to be one of the most action packed places in the world. It's got mountains, beach, plains, and, best of all, the Arctic. A tourist exploiting the country to its fullest potential would be gone at least a year. A few paragraphs hardly does it justice. But I'll give it a shot…

Animal Spotting
Anything involving wild stuff is cool. So whether it’s moose, whales, caribou, polar bears, buffalo, beavers or prairie dogs, you wanna watch it, Canada’s got it. You've got to be careful though - if an animal like the Kodiak or polar bear spots you, you're basically dead. Better just stick to beavers.

Niagara Falls
Yes, these are awe-inspiring and beautiful (see previous entry). But after five minutes you're left thinking ‘Now what?’ and trying not to be the first person to say you’re bored and want to go home now. If you want to stretch out your stay, you can either visit the gaudily lit attractions on the main drag or get married. So it's kind of like Las Vegas with a water feature.

Ottawa
I love Ottawa. In London, the Parliament buildings are surrounded by policemen and three foot high cement barricades. In Ottawa, people play football in front of them and use the steps as goals. It's incredibly relaxed and actually has character, unlike other manufactured capitals such as Canberra which has none whatsoever.

Vancouver Island
Supposedly one of the coolest places in the whole of Canada. It has whales, Indians, deep forests, tranquil lakes – heck, it was probably the inspiration for the Peter Pan books or something (it was discovered by Captain Cook). I’d love to go there, but seeing as Vancouver is further away from me than Norway, I think it’ll be a while.

The Yukon
Just the name conjures up images of Arctic wastes and howling winds. Another place I'd love to go to, if only because I've seen too many of those movies where people have to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash. It would be great to live on the edge of civilization, eking a living from the earth and its creatures. Only for a day or two though – it could get really cold.

The Rockies
These are absolutely massive and completely spectacular, and home to a funky mythical lake serpent called the Ogopogo (Canada’s answer to the Loch Ness monster). They’re also great for skiing - not that I've ever seen them...

To be honest, this whole list is a joke. Canadian Tourist Attractions? I’ve only seen southern Ontario! That’s like writing a guide to Britain having been to Slough!!! I mean, it’s pretty beautiful here (except Hamilton) but it pales in comparison to the rest of Canada. I’ll do a country-wide tour – then you’ll find out how amazing this place is.

Actually, my work visa won't come through for another six months (I got an official-looking letter the other day saying so). So I've got a bit of spare time now. I'm seriously thinking of touring the country for two or three weeks, if I could only find someone to come with me. We'll carve totem poles on Vancouver Island. We'll ride husky sleighs in the Yukon. We'll laugh at the Quebeckers and eat poutine. Who's with me? C'mon, it'll be fun! A road trip - we could be like Thelma & Louise (except without the homicide, robbery and being chased by the police)!!!

My Big Fat Catholic Easter

2005-03-29T18:02:00.000-05:00

Had a little trouble posting my blog today, as (a) we've just moved to a different part of our apartment block to escape the drilling (it worked - yay! - but it means no internet connection till Thursday), and (b) I'm in the internet cafe and some grenouille has switched my computer's language to French. Why does the entire country have to be bilingual for the sake of 20% of the population? That, of course, is one of Canada's Big Questions.

One of the things Canada has got sorted, though, is its festivals. The Canadians know how to party. England has all the festivals Canada has, it's just that no-one in England bothers celebrating them. Valentine's Day is depressing unless...actually it's just depressing (here it's more of a celebration of friendship, so they even make cards in school and give each other chocolate - hey, any excuse). Apparently there's some sort of Queen's Birthday in England, but we're so ashamed of being English we don't even know when it is (in Canada it's a national holiday). And I don't ever remember going home for Easter - in fact, I only celebrated it because I'm a Christian and it means something to me. But here? Everyone celebrates it.

It started on Good Friday, when all the Catholics had a procession through the streets of Toronto, carrying lifesize crucifixes and wearing black. Some were even crying. Now there's passion! It really gave some meaning to Easter Sunday. I mean, what's the point of Easter Sunday if you haven't marked Good Friday? ("Hey, Jesus is risen!" "Really? I didn't know he'd died.") We had a big meal at my grandma's house, with fish instead of meat - not sure why - and gossiped about everyone in the family (considering 'the family' stretches to hundreds of people, it's a pretty meaty subject). Someone we know - not in our family - was whacked recently (yes, I mean in the Goodfellas sense), so that was pretty interesting.

By the time Easter Sunday arrived, every Canadian I spoke to was filled with a sense of anticipation. When I woke up it felt like Christmas morning! Church was completely packed (I had to stand for most of the service) and there was a real excitement in the air. At lunchtime the entire family (well, aunts, uncles, grandparents & co) came for lunch, and everywhere there were smells of goat and pig and whatever the heck else we were eating. There was a lot. Plus everyone brought dessert so there was enough to feed a sub-continent. The best dessert was Easter bread, an Italian specialty made with half a tub of lard, tonnes of icing sugar and some other stuff. You would have thought the entire family was hypo-glycaemic from the way we were stuffing ourselves. For the entire day, we didn't go half an hour without eating something (and if we did, the more traditional Italians broke into a cold sweat).

I was on a sugar and family-induced high the entire weekend. My buzz wasn't even ruined by the fact that our car couldn't make it up Joe's parents driveway because of the ice, sliding back down into a ditch and having to be winched out the next day (by the way, this is why North America has so many four-wheel drives - in winter, you can be completely stuck without one. I guess people who live in Texas have less of an excuse, but it's still less ridiculous than owning one in Chelsea just because you live 5 minutes away from school and your kid can't use its legs).

So this morning was distinctly anti-climactical. Joe and I could barely drag ourselves out of bed (doesn't help that 'bed' is a mattress on the floor, so we don't even have the aid of gravity). But this is the great thing about Canada. No sooner is one festival over, than another is just around the corner. I'm pretty sure it's someone's birthday in a couple of weeks, and even if it isn't, we'll be in England next week! Yay! Rain, lack of space, and overpriced crap! I can't wait! But it's the people who make it : )

Before I sign off, I was thinking that I haven't added anything to the Hilarious Signs Series recently. So here's one: an ad from a church inviting us to 'Celebrate Our Lord's Crucification.' What, of language? Honestly, some of the grammar here is atrocious (although it's no better in England). Just this weekend my uncle was telling me about a car he had boughten. And that's when they bother using the perfect tense ('have', for those of you who doodled through English class). Most of the time it's "Aw, I shoulda took the left lane" or "Did you see my keys?" I'm honestly thinking of giving free English lessons to Canadians. It could be my service to humanity.

I'm with the Beaver

2005-03-24T15:34:00.000-05:00

I know I said I'd only be doing a weekly blog from now on, but life in Canada has really started to look up in the last 24 hours so I thought I'd give you a quick update.

Last night we set off for our Bible study group (our church has one weekly, basically a bunch of friends get together and discuss something in the Bible - in our case, friends we hadn't met yet) in the middle of a snowstorm. We arrived to find it was cancelled because the weather was so bad. But the nice woman whose house it was invited us in any way, so we got to know her and her husband and watched a movie on their widescreen TV with vats of popcorn. So we've made our first friends in Hamilton!!!! Losers no longer! Yessss!

I've also found work experience with a local paper! It's called Niagara This Week, and I'll be doing freelance stuff for them. Their paper is twice-weekly and absolutely massive (140 pages total per week), so ‘word count’ doesn't really come into their vocabulary. My idea of heaven. They also get to do cool stuff like tune into ambulance and fire radio frequencies and find out what accidents have happened (which I think is actually illegal in Britain).

Not only this, but it also has a great name - people have actually heard of Niagara because of the Falls. The other newspapers have hilarious names like the Milton Canadian Champion (don't worry about those dastardly Americans, kids! The Canadian Champion is here! Dadadaaa!) and the Oakville Beaver. Must be pretty hard to get taken seriously: “Excuse me sir, would you object to a quick interview? I'm with the Beaver.”

Better than being with the Daily Mail I suppose…

2005-03-22T13:54:00.000-05:00

Us a year ago. Sensibly, we hired a chauffeur to drive us around (see previous entry).

Highway to Hell

2005-03-22T13:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a bit of advice for a happy marriage: never, ever, let your spouse give you driving lessons. I made my first Canadian journey last Saturday and it wasn't pretty. Apart from forgetting that I had actually driven before ("Now you thank the driver behind you"), Joe got scared every time I made a mistake, which made him yell, which made me make more scary mistakes. We'd just nearly been wiped out by an articulated lorry when my aunt Marilyn called (good timing). Joe picked up the phone.

"Hi Aunt Mar", he said sweetly. "Yes, things are fine. We're just having a bit of a driving less-"

"HE'S BEING AN ARSEHOLE, AUNTIE MAR!" I screamed hysterically, trying not to veer onto the hard shoulder.

My aunt just laughed and carried on chatting with Joe. I would have stopped the car if I'd known where it was safe to pull over, but I didn't because Canada has all sorts of weird road rules (example: you can turn right on red lights).

Anyway, we eventually got there, after several wrong turnings and encounters with death. Next time I'm driving on my own (at least then I can only kill myself).

We were on our way to see some good friends near London (London, Ontario - the source of much confusion due to Canada's complete failure to think up original place names). They've been through the same driving nightmares as us and are still happily married after about 35 years, so that was reassuring.

They moved to Canada about 30 years ago to make their fortune, and succeeded. Their house in Dorchester (I rest my case about the place names) is absolutely massive and is a cross between a Chateau and the Kremlin. In their basement they have a private cinema and a pub (!), and their back garden is 70 odd acres of land with woods and a racing track. The land itself only cost about 135,000 pounds!!!

So sitting in their living room sipping tea was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. It was snowing and the back garden was full of fir trees and the odd deer, so it was like tea in Lapland : ) And this was on Canada’s first day of spring…

It also happened to be our anniversary (you could tell from the way this entry started, couldn't you?). One year of marriage! Even with the occasional argument, I'd recommend it to anyone. Heck, what's life with no one to argue with? Better out than in, that's what I always say.

So we celebrated on Saturday by going to Niagara Falls, scene of eternal romance and that great part in Superman II where the kid nearly falls to his death. At night it's absolutely beautiful – red lights turn the water pink, and frozen towers of rock rise from the mist. We were standing near the top of the Falls, and with the Niagara Gorge yawning before us, it was like staring into the centre of the earth (sometimes the lights are green, and then the Gorge resembles the surface of Pluto).

After that, we had dinner at a restaurant on Lake Ontario. Towards the end of the meal, I overheard an English accent drifting from the bar (well, pseudo-English - Welsh or Brummie or something :) It's true what they say about the accent - he was surrounded by at least five waitresses who were hanging on to his every word. Except he was completely full of it, saying how Oxford Street has the best shopping in the world and stuff like that (er, have you ever been there?). I so badly wanted to go and blow his cover. But of course I had better things to do.

All in all, it was a pretty fun weekend. Unfortunately on Monday I was woken up at 7 a.m. by the garbage men emptying the disposal, which was humming at 100 decibels directly below us. I wouldn't have minded, but I knew that in one hour the drilling was going to start. And sure enough…

Last night, we actually got to bed at a decent time. Unfortunately the fire alarm woke us at 3 a.m. I felt like committing hara-kiri. It went on for about 45 minutes before they worked out that somebody had just burnt their toast. At 3am????

So at the moment I'm a stranger to a good night's sleep. This leaves my thoughts whirring around my head and coming up with all sorts of strange things. Like my idea for a super-musical. Super-groups consist of members from lots of top bands, so a super-musical would consist of a plot and songs from all the top musicals. Something like this…

A cat who’s a prostitute in Saigon meets and marries an Argentine dictator who was born with hideous birth defects and has to spend the rest of his life in a mask. The cat becomes First Lady of Argentina, but unfortunately her husband is jailed for stealing a loaf of bread. Things look up, however, when God begins to give him dreams in prison that bring him to the attention of Pharaoh, who makes him his second-in-command. But the final tragedy occurs when the cat-prostitute and the Argentine dictator discover they belong to opposite sides in a New York gang war and can never be together. They commit suicide. The end.

I think I need to get more sleep.

Canadian National Sports

2005-03-18T16:35:00.000-05:00

Most Canadian sports involve ice, the outdoors, or both. I have noticed that for a country so in love with sport though, it's the kids who actually do it the most. The adults seem to spend more time watching it on TV (but maybe that's just because it's winter - although if all your sports involve ice...anyway). Here is a guide to that weird and wonderful world...

Ice Hockey
The obvious one, and my personal favourite having played it myself. There's really nothing like slamming someone into the boards (ie the edge of the rink) at 30 miles an hour, purely to get hold of a burger-sized piece of plastic. The rules of professional hockey are as follows: beat the crap out of each other for three 15-minute intervals until the ice turns red. The winning team is the one that's still conscious. Excellent.

Lacrosse
Before I played this as a teenager, I had pictures of genteel boarding-school girls prancing down the pitch with their nets held high, suffering nothing nastier than a sprained ankle. Now I know different. Lacrosse is standing in the rain in your netball skirt, trying to protect your shins from Tamsyn Parris or some other psycho. Professional lacrosse is so bad they have to wear 20 pounds of Kevlar body armour. And they still beat the crap out of each other.

Curling
This is the bowls of winter sports, and about as interesting. It involves a guy pushing a 10-kilo weight (which bears a bizarre resemblance to the Starship Enterprise) along some ice so it reaches a certain spot. Then other players use their starships to push the first starship out of the way. The really funny part is the people who run in front of the starship trying to smooth the ice so it goes further - it looks like they're sweeping up or something. Weird.

Snowboarding
This is to skiing what surfing is to yachting. As a skiier, I confess I'm a bit snobby about it. Sorry, but there are far too many snowboarders who use the words 'dude' and 'rush' for it to be a serious sport. And they seem to spend most of the time trying to pump as much as they can out of their adrenal glands, like adrenalin is a valuable commodity or something. When James Bond starts snowboarding away from the enemy, then I'll begin to believe there's a bit of style to it.

Lumberjacking
Yes, this is actually a sport - I saw it on TV earlier today ('The Lumberjack Challenge'!). It's hilarious to watch - events include the Axe Throw, the Modified Chainsaw, whittling something into a totem pole in the shortest time possible, and sawing trees with that two-man saw that's the source of constant humour in Bugs Bunny cartoons. The participants all wear vests and look like Desperate Dan. Highly recommended viewing.

There are a million other sports that I could write about, but I figured these were the most representative of Canada. Coming up next - ooh, I might do Canadian Tourist Attractions seeing as we might be going to Niagara Falls tomorrow. You'll just have to wait and see...