It is OK. I will not give up my blog. The reasons are:
1. If you are away on "business" and have nothing to do, you can write your web-blog in your hotel room whilst drinking gin. (If I am at home there are too many distractions, e.g. 1 litre bottles of gin, pathologists, knitting, sausages, cake etc.)
2. My adoring fans are begging me to continue, some via the medium of email. They are embarrassing both me and themselves, so I shall continue if it will make them stop.
3. Only the people who read this web-blog will be able to explain what the cock is going on in this picture; a picture I only just this minute noticed on the wall of my hotel room.* I think it is something to do with death and I am not at all sure about it.
* A hotel room with a kitchen in a hotel that soaked me with disappointment earlier this evening: seeing a small grey bag (with ribbon) on my pillow, I assumed it was a delicious low-class cheapchoc to rot my teeth whilst I slept.
But no. It was a fucking 'rose quartz' crystal, a thing that will apparently bring me love and harmony whilst purifying me in my sleep. What a thing! It has alarmed me into opening the 'larger size miniature' of Chivas Regal, whatever the cock that is.
Yesterday, when someone asked me (in tones of wonderment), "How did you meet your CANADIAN boyfriend when you are FROM LONDON?" (expecting me to say 'on the internet loveline sites' or 'from a Desperate Canadian Man Shop' or 'at a cockring exchange party*'), I said "in Canterbury" then changed the subject.
I did not want to tell them that we had met through my blog. I didn't want to tell them that I had a blog at all. It has been like this for some months; if ever I admit to it, I talk about it in the same tones that you would use if you were admitting to labial plastic surgery.
It seems that people find it harder to receive the news that I have a blog than I do to give it. They make the sort of face they'd make if you were showing them the features on your new mobile phone or telling them about "Web 2.0" or "the long tail", or seriously recommending Blink by Mr Gladwell like it is the Bible.**
The people who sneer the most are the people who work in advertising and marketing, or 'trend hunters'; the sort of people who get money for talking about trends and consumers and strategies without ever leaving their office in Soho or watching commercial television.
They write about 'blogging' with as much authority as they write about people who live in council houses and drink Diamond White and like Daniel O'Donnell, which must be quite hard when you earn $150,000 a year and live in a nice apartment and can use words like "dissonance" accurately.
Some of them write blogs, too; blogs about marketing and advertising, or blogs about trends, or how to spot trends, or the impact of blogging on the dissonance of trends. But they don't read your blog, or my blog; they just write about the idea of them, and have many theories about what sort of person you are (they cannot imagine me, not even if they try).
I have had it with my blog. I want to give it up because having a blog isn't interesting at parties anymore, and I do not like caring that my stats are going down every day. But more to the point because I work in advertising and get paid money for talking about trends and consumers and people (without ever leaving my lovely office or lovely house and talking to actual people), I know that blogging is, like, over.
Everything now is Web 6.0 and dissonance and mashed up culture and Premiumisation; two years ago it was New Traditionalism and something to do with some bloke in Portland, and three years ago it was all about - well, I can't remember; it's about something else now, and I'm thinking about that instead.
But then there are the facts! I do not like facts, for they have a habit of reminding you who you actually are, and not who you are in your head (when at imaginary parties). I moved to Canada because of this blog. I have met nice people through it (and some bloke in Newcastle); been asked for my opinion about things I know nothing about by very clever people because of it; learnt weird things, been sent stuff and because of it been treated kindly and with great generosity by people I will probably never meet.
But all of that is sentimental claptrap (even if some of it has meant emigrating to another country). The sad truth is that even if no-one else is reading it, writing this web-blog still amuses me greatly, and long as I still find it funny (despite the fact that no-one else does), I shall carry on regardless. And if things get really desperate, I shall invent a trend about the dissonance of blogging and sell it to someone for $150,000.
* I do not recommend them!!!
** Summary of the book: "Often your instinct is right. Trust it!" (You may now send me $30 as you have not had to buy the book to find that out for yourself.)
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.
