I Have Lost Track Of The Days

I have a new plan! Gone are the days of long posts or the promise of posts that never materialise.

"Why is that?", I hear you squeal in horror. "It is simple", I reply, pulling on my pipe and adjusting my fez, "I can never remember what day it is, and it is therefore impossible for me to continue writing my web-blog in its old configuration. It is, therefore, 'all change' at Non-workingmonkey, and I am going to try a new method of web-blogging!".

My new plan is to write things ALMOST LIVE, i.e., soon after they happen in almost real-time. That way, there will be things written but there will be no 'theme', as it were; merely a stunningly interesting sense of immediacy and/or a very clear understanding of how astonishingly dull my life is.

For e.g., in the last week you might have had five posts that could have (perhaps) been on the following 'topics':

Canada: Really Dull Like Everyone Outside Canada Thinks It Is, Or Secretly Having A Very Good Laugh At Everyone Else's Expense?

Summary thus: who knows? Canadians are being so polite the whole time (at best charming, at worst a passive-aggressive vortex of hell that leaves me clutching at walls and weeping), that it is almost impossible to get a real sense of what anyone is saying, and therefore what they want.

(This is not true of the great many French Canadians with whom I work, who get to the point rather more quickly and with more excellent jokes than their compatriots in Toronto. So saying, the Montreal police patrol the streets on Segways, which hardly instils much faith although I am, if I am honest, biased.)

In its defence, I should point out that Canadians enjoy a ridiculously high standard of living, have a great deal of space, mountains, sky etc, a lot of natural resources and a lot of good restaurants. It is a jolly good place to live, if you don't like old things much.

On the downside, even the fashionable ones dress like Londoners in media agencies in 1992, there isn't a good newspaper in the entire country, they make really weird films and the telly's rubbish. (The radio is quite good though, particularly the very brilliant Wire Tap, which is almost as good as This American Life, and considerably better than the ghastly Vinyl Cafe, which is a very bad Canadian version of A Prairie Home Companion).

I suppose the generally rubbish media thing may have something to do with the fact that most Canadians have better things to do than 'consume media', e.g. be diplomatic, host the 2010 Winter Olympics, not be American, and/or run about outside either in the snow, or because they are celebrating the fact that there is no snow. This is different to Britain, where all there is to do is watch telly, talk about mortgages, go to Tesco and read the newspapers.

Sarah Brightman
Ghastly woman, particularly in the Top of the Pops days. Fell across her on the television the other night looking like a bald hamster in a wig trapped in a wind tunnel, doing some ghastly rock opera performance of "I Vow To Thee My Country" in a cathedral in Vienna, apparently accompanied by the main guitar-player in Nine Inch Nails.

Remembered she used to have to make sweet love to "Sir" Andrew Lloyd-Webber and tried to imagine a twos-up with him and Tim Rice. Threw up slightly in mouth.

Trying to sell flat in London
Not easy when flat is in London (England) and you are in Montreal (Canada). Particularly not easy when minky-whale viewing from a boat on the St Lawrence river interrupted by the startling news that my kitchen ceiling has fallen in, nearly killing tenant and flattening cat a week after both locks on door break, locking in both tenant and cat in flat.

Bad news then continues to flow: the loo breaks and outside pipe is blocked; the dishwasher has stopped working. Selling the flat is then rendered almost insensibly difficult when realise that water flowing on inside of bathroom wall is due to leak in fabric of building, and is therefore the joint responsibility of me and Twatboy who owns the flat upstairs.

If this is not bad enough, realise with startling jolt that is in fact is the joint responsibility of me, Twatboy, and Mr Dave the psychotic freeholder. This one could run and run!!!

Words I Have Successfully Taught My French Canadian Colleagues And Friends
Cock
Bollocks
Wanker
Brilliant

A Website I Like Enormously
Regular readers will be aware that I spend most of my time reading Passive Aggressive Notes, but I must 'put a word in' for Yearbook Yourself, which has been entered in my timesheets at work as "new business" or "Montreal office management admin". Yes!