I just may believe this time

"I believe in something; I just don't know what!". Ah yes, the familiar cry of the 'spiritual', often uttered as they roll their yoga mats and gnaw at their Tofu Crust Surprise (accompanied by a light cup of herbal jizzwater).

Sadly, I am an atheist as I can't find any kind of logical reason or explanation for it, any of it (not just the Christian bit of it - all of it), although I have always rather envied people their faith; the nice ones always seem rather cheerful in a calm kind of way, which is always nice to see, and they seem not to worry about a great many things - which is presumably the result of believing you will go to heaven, etc. (I am OK with just stopping living, and am pro-cardboard coffins, cremation, and being spread in the doorway of Mr Gregg's the Baker, Upper Norwood.)

Anyway, something I have seen recently has tested my lack of faith. Is Jesus really my friend? If so, I'm in.

I'm not eating that

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!

Day 752: I Make Friends With A Balloon Pilot

Time passes. The days in my new job (in Montreal, not in Toronto) spin like the dog-eared cards on a Rolodex; I realise that I am old and that the world is not shaped the way it was when I was a girl.

At lunchtime I shut my office door and feverishly search the Google for articles containing a number of search terms, including "I wish Generation Y would fuck right off", "In my day, we had to work for a living", "How dare you fucking talk to me like that, ingrate", and "How to explain the notion of earning a promotion and/or payrise rather than demanding it".

It is quite exhausting and a world of richness is contained therein, but sadly I would be fired for writing it (which is not to say I am not thinking about it quite a lot and 'jotting down' notes in a secret booklet). Suffice to say that the only conclusion I can draw is that we become our parents or, if that notion is too ghastly to contemplate, we find ourselves saying the things the generation before us said.

At the weekends, however, life takes a turn for the better, for it is then that activities happen. These activities are many and varied, and often include a 'wine tasting' or perhaps a trip to a set of tunnels made of coloured plastic. Occasionally we might mount our bicycles and tour about the place pointing at things and wishing for a picnic, but there has been rain in Montreal lately and we have been driven indoors, leaving the house occasionally to steal from our neighbours' recycling bins, take potshots at raccoons, and spy on the twelve Mexicans five houses down.

Yesterday, however, was different, for I travelled in a hot air balloon. It is one of those things that everyone says is great (e.g.
organisms, Paris, crack cocaine, support tights, etc), and it is also one of those things that really IS great. (I will not gush anymore, but a) you have to have a license to fly one; b) it is totally and weirdly still; c) it is very solid feeling and not wobbly; d) you can control one of those muthafuckers to within a foot if you are handy with the gas; e) it is very wonderful; f) it is also totally pointless, and therefore even better.)

"My name's Wes, and the fire extinguisher's between your thighs." Yes! It is our P.I.L.O.T. speaking to us! PILOT! We are three of us in a basket: me, Wes and the pathologist (and giver of this quite extraordinarily good present). He is a bit alarming: we think he might have been a killer, or at least in the army (or navy) and/or the CIA. But he is really nice! He listens to all my stupid questions (whilst putting fire in the balloon and steering it 14,000ft in the air) and also answers them in quite a patient way, e.g.:

Me: How long have you been doing this?
Wes: I've been flying critters for 42 years now... (list follows of all flying things, including Harrier Jump Jets, etc)... and hot hair balloons for six.
Me (on verge of winning Most Fucking Original Question Ever Asked By A Passenger To Balloon Pilot Competition 2008): Does it ever get boring?
Wes: No.




I am not surprised it never gets boring. It is really great, particularly when you are landing. Up down up down up down. "I'm feeling for the wind", says Wes. I am thinking we are about to land in the St Lawrence. We are landing in the garden. No we are not. We are going up again! We are landing in the cemetery. No we are not. We are landing in the carpark. No. The garden. No. The cornfield. Yes. Definitely the cornfield, which is in fact also a bog. No! We are not! We are, with two feet to spare, landing in the corner of someone's garden. "That was ... amazing", I say to Wes, and I mean it - for although the flying bit is good, the landing bit and waving at small children bit is even better. He rests his big mangloved CIA hand on my face and says "Why thank you, my dear!". He is really great.

But I digress. Yes. We are in a balloon, in someone's garden, in the middle of a town, and we have drawn a crowd. The people who live there are out for the evening, possibly at the balloon gala that is happening thirty miles away.



They are all loving it, even the small children who have been brought up on for e.g. Nintendo etc and can't be impressed by anything anymore.

An hour later, we have folded up the balloon and the tarpaulin and put away the basket. It took ten people an hour. We have been chewed up by Canadian mosquitos (they are approx 300% bigger than European mosquitos) and we are all in the big truck, apart from three people who are riding in the basket on the back. They get out a bottle of 'fizzywine' and we drink it; Wes gives us his telephone number and says we must telephone him so he can take us up again before he goes back to Florida. I am nearly sick!! It is too much.

I sleep all the way back to Montreal, and the next day the lady who was with Wes (not his wife - she is showing Quarter horses in Colorado) sends us an email with a photograph of us in the balloon. I'm the one on the left.

Day 733: I Am Not Dead

I type this as I stuff a cold over-spiced omelette into my warm receiving monkeymouth, and I write merely to confirm that I am not dead; in fact, as I sleep I am composing posts about farmers, conference and bilingual working practices in my head.

But other matters are pressing on my tiny brain, each one slowly whittling away the time available to update my web-blog, the main one being:

"Where O where has my Mac (now apparently known as MobileMe) email gone?"

1% of users cannot access their mail, and I must be one of that 1%. Does anyone know what's going on?

(And no, this is not the time to write irritating comments about the superiority of Gmail and/or any other web-based email service; nor is it the time to slag off Mac and/or posit the superiority of the PC-based experience: the fact is that as each day passes - and it's been five already - Apple are doing a very good job of getting me to fall out of love with them, a feat that I thought was almost impossible.)

Yes. Fuck off, Apple Mac. In my eyes, the Apple is now rotten, full of worms, decay and death. Yes. I hate you, Apple Mac. I never thought I could say it, but I have; it is as astonishing as saying I hate Marmite, John Lewis or Staedtler Lumocolour permanent pens with small nibs - unthinkable until now.

Damn you, Steve Jobs, and all who sail in you. And tell me where my fucking email is, you big twat.