The television in my Toronto hotel room is stuck on Dancing With The Stars. Across the screen skitter a woman who used to be a 'Spicy Girl' and the sister of Donny Osmond; both are dancing to "My Heart Will Go On", which is being sung live by Céline Dion.
I ignore them and continue scratch confusedly at the thing that you hang from your door that brings toast, as long as you hang it on your knob (not that kind!!!) before 2am. HOW ABOUT BREAKFAST IN BED? it demands imperiously. This seems preferable to sitting in the Hall of Breakfast with over 300 salesmen from Winnipeg, and so I scratch on.
But I am confused. It has words on it that look like English and claim to be items on the 'Breakfast Menu'; for only $16.00 I can have some Wholewheat Toast and some Birchermuesli; for another $6 dollars, I can have eggs 'over easy' or 'sunny side up' accompanied by 'Peameal bacon' and some 'home fried potatoes'. I do not know what these things are, but I am sure I would rather have them than 'Tundra's breakfast quesadilla'. It has chorizo sausage in it and is 'topped with sour cream and salsa' and does not sound like breakfast at all.
But all this is as nothing, for I have a free rubber duck and the sure knowledge that by the time I get home, the next set of application forms will have arrived from the Québec Immigration Service.
There will be some more things I need to do to qualify for residency of Canada's finest province* in addition to and on top of the work I have already completed (on Québec Culture and Tradition). This has included:
1. Demonstrating that I own three Céline Dion albums, and know the lyrics to at least two French language tracks;
2. Referring to Céline Dion as "Céline" as naturally as I would refer to Sting as a "preening cockmonkey";
3. Proving that I have seen at least three Cirque du Soleil shows;
4. Accurately translating the terms "mon chum" and "ma blonde"; saying "c'est le fun!" three times in the same sentence;
5. Effective wearing of combat trousers;
6. Ability to identify the items contained in each of the following picture clues:
I will not be able to sleep for the suspense!
* If you are French-Canadian. I cannot speak for the other provinces, but I must say Ontario seems awfully nice, from what I've seen.
I am in Canada and it is snowing, as it does for eight months of the year. There is snow everywhere in piles centimetres thick, but it is confusing some people. For example, by 9.05am it becomes apparent that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are (unlike everyone else in Canada), rubbish at predicting the weather (and/or have been drinking Ice Wine for breakfast).
They are trying to say how much snow will fall and cannot make up their minds. For e.g. at 7.45am there will be "between five and ten centimetres"; at 8.05, "between ten and fifteen centimetres", and by 9am, "under five centimetres". It is all rubbish though because I have my eyes and I know what I can see in the garden. At 7.30am it looks like this:
Twenty minutes later – by the time I have consumed a cup of coffee and six oysters and spent ten minutes doing some 3-way online chatting with Alain de Botton and John Humphys – it looks like this:
This is not good news. In fact, it is my worst nightmare happening in real-time. I am going to die in a blizzard, and all because I was not prepared.
For some weeks now I have been looking at the most terrifying web-feature on the internet. It is called the Canadian Disaster Database. ”You can search the disaster database by using criteria such as the type of disaster, and/or the location or time period of occurrence…”, it trills, encouraging me to “…please select one or more disaster type, one or more province and one or more time period from the lists below..."
It is fucking terrifying. According to the statistics I am definitely going to die (early) of natural causes, e.g. a hurricane (with ice in it) coming down the garden and tearing the house up (despite the fact that it is tethered to the ground with tungsten cables) whilst I am inside it watching Dickinson’s Real Deal on BBC Canada.
What makes it so awful is that I am not prepared for natural disasters of any kind, even though I know I should be. I know this fact for one simple reason: the second most terrifying web-site on the internet, Get Prepared. It shits me up good and proper, and you can see why:
.
I do not have a single emergency kit, not even a tiny sunken candle in a tin in the car in case I fall into a snow drift on the way to the state-owned wine shop. It is a disaster.
But is it? As time passes, it is clear that Canadians have been genetically modified over time and that their blood is 43% anti-freeze. In England when there is snow like there is in Quebec today (about 10 centimetres), the whole country grinds to a stop and the tabloids have gigantic headlines saying things like SECOND ICE AGE ATTACKS BRITAIN with a photograph of a yeti, and then a double page spread with AEROPLANES LOCKED TO GROUND BY 1 INCH OF SNOW.
In Canada it is different. Look at this evidence with your eyes. It is the view that I had from a window at Montreal airport this afternoon.
You can probably see a parked Air Canada aeroplane (to add some authentic local flavour), and the two snow ploughs which went up and down for some time, shooting snow out of their tops. (It was quite soothing until I realised how fast they were going and that there are people in the way.)
The flight (which would never have taken off in England, bearing in mind I was in a tiny bi-plane full of plump businessmen and a screaming child who kicked the back of my seat) took off at 4.45 rather than 2.15. It was a bit annoying, but no-one got cross. Earlier that morning snow was ploughed off the road(s) before I was even awake, and no-one seemed to be falling over in the street.
At home, what is (obviously) a blizzard (for example I can no longer see the edges of the terrasse*) is described in gentle tones by my cohort, a French-Canadian pathologist who cuts his own hair, as "just a bit of snow". In the mornings, wearing only a pair of light shorts and a vest, he goes outside with a shovel and removes snow from the drive so that the car can get out. (The car that I can barely see as it is covered in snow.)
Every day I am thinking things like "I am sure -6 is quite cold", but then I find myself having conversations with Canadians who say things like "not long until winter!". I find myself wearing a floor length triple weight wool coat, hat, gloves, thermal underwear and a cashmere scarf; the Canadians are wearing t-shirts and suede jackets and congratulating themselves on getting their snow tyres in "before the cold starts".
Whilst my skin (fragile like a butterfly's wing made of warm terracotta) is falling off my face in giant flakes despite constantly covering myself in ever-thicker moisturiser**, Canadian women seem fine in the face area and like nothing is weird or wrong; they also seem to be able to walk on impacted ice on pavements in high heeled boots without falling over, finding only the time to look with pity at my knee-high Timberlands (with thermal lining).
But I will not give in. No way. I am staying in the colonies and I am going to see the winter through in the style of the early settlers. I will make it through the three months of darkness that Canada experiences from December to January. I will eat pickled beavers along with the rest of them. I will sip from bottles of anti-freeze mixed with Caribou and I will survive.
* A cunty word, granted, but less cunty than 'patio'.
** North American Readers Who Are Used To Extreme Cold: it is not usual to use Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream as a day moisturiser. Please send help. I have aged 10 years!!! (In the face. I am still pleasingly immature.) It is tight and horrible and making me miserable.
Following my exciting trip to Toronto, I have a job. I am therefore very busy re-arranging my new pens, buying books, reading blogs 'for research', waxing my satchel etc, and it is brilliant.
It is brilliant for these reasons:
1. I am being paid to think 2. Even better, I am being paid to think about things I find interesting (e.g. chocolate) 3. I am not working with idiots. Au contraire! I am working with splendid people. 4. Sometimes I must work at home (where it is quiet and I can think) 5. But sometimes I can go to an office (where it is interesting and full of people) 6. It allows me to be be metaphorically non-working (in my heart) whilst earning enough money to buy sweets, crisps, hats etc. 7. It is freelance.
Also, I am paid to watch things like this and ask questions (of myself), e.g. why is Amanda Lear singing the song? What are the rabbits for?, etc.
All this means I am very busy. For example, right now this second I must go and eat some more chocolate (aka "research"), and then I must have a conference call - a conference call that I know for a fact will be better than the last one.
UPDATE:
In truth, I haven't got much to say, what with getting on with it and all of that (whatever 'it' is). This is good though.
I am going to Toronto tomorrow to talk to some people about some jobs. The jobs are things that apparently I can do in Montreal (which is the nearest big place to where I live*) and that is just as well as although Toronto is in Canada (like Montreal is), Montreal to Toronto is the distance equivalent of (for e.g.) Yorkshire to Tiananmen Square. (Canada is very big, in case you had not noticed.)
But I digress! I have some matters for your urgent attention, matters that I trust you will be able to solve and/or answer whilst I am skipping about in Toronto tomorrow. (Talking of which, I've got four hours to kill there tomorrow afternoon; any suggestions?)
The first is some help with dream interpretation. I cannot say where this dream came from, who had it and about whom it was had, but none of those facts are relevant. I am very aware that the dreams of others are fuck-boring, unless they involve oneself, a gimp mask and a squirrel monkey called Jeffrey; this one, however, caught my attention (and I am not even a Freudian psychotherapist!!):
"I had a dream about you last night that was very long and detailed. You had 2 loos: a bucket for weeing in (because it was more ecologically sound) and a loo for doing poos in. I dropped a bottle of Dove shampoo and conditioner (like the one I bought yesterday to go to the gym) and one of those plastic mesh body scrubber things in your weebucket and fished them out and rinsed them.
Then you let me use your poo loo for a wee. The rest of the house I can describe in complete detail too - suffice to say you were renting it and not unhappily but weren't that keen on the dark green sitting room carpet."
What is this about? There is no sexystuff between either person involved, and this I must make clear! Please do not send in stupid answers, e.g. "you like wee", but I will certainly consider answers from for e.g. psychotherapists and/or Russell Grant.
If dream interpretation holds no interest for you, you may find this film interesting. In it you may see the name of the village in which I live (I will give a prize if you can guess which one it is) - but that is entirely secondary to the main event, which is a woman called Muguette singing "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" in French. It is called Ces bottes sont faites pour marcher, and I believe Muguette is French-Canadian rather than French.
I am also looking for some toy help. I cannot remember the name of two toys I would like to own again, and I have a broken toy that needs mending.
First of all, the toys I cannot remember. I will describe them and then you can tell me what they are, as I know that one (or many) of you will remember:
Toy One: Vision Camera Thing With Circular Film Inserts
This is a very good thing. My grandmother had it; I think it had originally been my father's. There was the camera thing itself and then all the picture things that were set along the margins of a circle. You slotted the circle thing (each one containing a number of different images) into the camera thing, then held it up to your eyes and pressed a button and it moved the pictures along.
When you looked into the picture in the circle it was amazing, like you were actually there ('there' being for e.g. in Brussels, or looking at the tower thing in Toronto). I often think of this magical toy, and wish to own one again (perhaps using the power of the internets).
Toy Two: Magical Plastic Garden
This was also a really good thing. There were brown plastic 'ground' bits that you put the flowers, plants etc into. It was really really good. I think I played with it when I was c. 8 and I am 38 now. Like the circle film vision thing, I would like to own it again, very much.
Broken Monkey
I have a very special monkey. He is broken and needs mending, re-stuffing and general care. The Royal College of Needlework claimed that they did stuffed toy repairs, but did not reply to my electronic mails. (Perhaps they thought it was impossible that such a monkey could exist and did not reply as they thought I was joking.) Does anyone know of a really good toy repairer?
Finally, the childrens' programme I think I imagined. (NB: I was a child in England, and was born in 1969.) It has been haunting me for many years, but all I can remember is that there was something really really really bad involving electricity pylons, aliens, and everyone evacuating England and going to live in France.
(There is a chance of course that it was not a television programme and is actually a fact - a fact that explains why perfectly nice parts of France are drenched in ghastly English people who must be controlled by aliens, which is why they cannot speak French.)
Thanking you in advance for your kind attentions I remain in this, as in all weathers,
NWM
* I say I live in Montreal because I live in a place there is NO WAY you would have heard of, unless you are intimately acquainted with the 640 and often visit Oka.
Regular readers will be surprised to know that I never win prizes. There is a obvious explanation for this astonishing fact: simply put, I do not enter competitions.
I do not enter competitions because if I did, I would definitely win them all and that would be unfair: other people need a chance - a chance they would not have if I were in the competition with them.
To 'demonstrate my point', here is a list of the prizes I would have won, had I been 'in the race', as it were:
Olympic Gold for Britain (three day event)
BAFTA for Best Actress for the film I wasn't in because I was doing my O-Levels*
Masterchef Grand Prix (Loyd Grossman era; I am not sure who the two oiks doing it now are)
Ask The Family (if I had entered by myself without my family, who shout "gin!" if you ask them anything at all)
Mastermind (specialist subjects: Literary Jurisprudence And The Novels Of James Joyce; Cakes of the World; The Evolution of Cockrings, 1902 - 1984)
The Krypton Factor (no explanation needed!!!)
The X-Factor (no explanation needed!!!)
The Orange Prize for Literature , which I would have given back because it is ladies-only therefore sexist, and I am definitely not a sexist. For example, I think that men should clean houses sometimes (e.g. when the woman is ill with tuberculosis and/or two broken arms), and some women should be allowed to drive, but only on special occasions.
The Booker Prize (very close between me and The Byatt, but I get it in the end, obv)
Nobel Peace Prize (no explanation needed!!!)
Instead, I have a couple of prizes from The Kinross Show (1975-1981) for various artistic endeavours, e.g. "Miniature Garden Made of Peanuts and Jelly Tots" (2nd place), and "Pasta Diorama of The Royal Wedding" (joint 1st place), a second-place award for my donkey, Roly (in pic), a distant memory of winning a bottle of sweet sherry on a Tombola in 1984, and the definite knowledge that I have 'won the heart' (!) of a French-Canadian pathologist.
All this is good, but is it enough? No it is not. As a web-blogger of some repute (and very low daily visit statistics), I am constantly hoping that my Work will be recognised, that that I will win for e.g. a big award that has the National Press (nationality irrelevant) telephoning me, and publishers begging me to write a real book for them. (This is unlikely, but only because this particular craze passed in 2005, much in the same way that we had all moved on from Space Dust by 1980.)
There have been some 'blips' (as it were); a man called Tim once gave me a Swampy, whatever that is; but since then, nothing.
That is until yesterday!! Oh my word. Miss Baroque has given me an award!. It is really good too! Is it for being "powerful and a tonic" and also for being The Only Person She Knows Who Can Use Capital Initials Without It Being Cringeworthy. This is better than a first-place rosette for a pic of Chas 'n' Di made out of macaroni, let me tell you! Thanks, Ms B!
* For younger readers: O-Levels and CSEs were in the olden days, before children were stupid and had to do GSCEs instead. O-Levels were harder than CSEs, both of which were harder than GSCEs. I have 11 O-Levels, which means I am very clever, and 4 A-Levels, which means I am even cleverer. Also I am beautiful with a singing voice not unlike that of a young Mick Jagger.
The television in my Toronto hotel room is stuck on Dancing With The Stars. Across the screen skitter a woman who used to be a 'Spicy Girl' and the sister of Donny Osmond; both are dancing to "My Heart Will Go On", which is being sung live by Céline Dion. 
