Snow!

It's snowing tonight and it is only October. The amount of snow that has fallen is enough to prompt a severe weather warning in England, but not enough to persuade a Canadian to get their winter coat out of storage. I've only lived in a place (i.e., Canada) where it snows for three years, so I am still quite interested in it and I like it a lot and find it to be very attractive, even though I can't walk in it without looking like I have legs of wood. In summary: snow is great.

Here is a poem not-really about snow. You probably know it, because you are a reader of this web-blog and are, therefore: a) moderately well-read; b) attractive in certain lights; c) muscular in surprising ways. Here goes.

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.


World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.


And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

                                                                        Louis MacNeice

Coming soon: I receive a mysterious of gift of two severed hands from Portugal (one missing some fingers), and continue to live with the very real consequences of finding out how to watch English television in real time from Canada.

Pip pip!

NWM

I can't remember

...If I have posted these, ever. If not, it is important that you see them.

It is also important - if you do not know about them already (not likely if you live in the UK but possible if you live somewhere else) - that you read Modern Toss.  Are you aware of the work of Mr Tourette? 

Their comics and books and that are 10/10, but they also make stuff. For e.g. they now make this teacloth and I am paralysed by my desire to own it.

Anyway, that is all for now. The wind is up and there is baking to do, plus I have over 180 feet of 3 foot beans in my fridge and they need attending to. 

Pip pip!

NWM

I don't understand either

These are mysterious times, my friends.  Why would I want to wrestle with a pony? Why is the expression "delicious aromas wafted up the stairs, permeating my hungry nostrils" going round and round in my head?  And what is going on the streets of Montreal and/or St-Joseph-du-Lac, where I live?

First of all, this enticing sign outside our local ostrich farm (NB the nonchalant way I say 'our local ostrich farm', like it is normal):

Second of all, these dogs in necklaces (not local, but mysterious nevertheless):

Third of all, what are these leaves doing on this scooter?

Fourth of all, how am I going to get through my fourth Canadian winter? I might go to the gym. I might take up the Marguerite Patten Potluck Project again. I may do both. Or I may just stay in watching "Come Dine With Me" and rocking.

Pip "Cackle" Pip

NWM

I play a game

It has been a weekend of excitement. On Friday, an "art film". (I am glad I went, but will draw a veil over the rest of my response to the work.) There were Q&As afterwards; one of the overly self-aware students behind us started her question with "As a film-maker...", only to be followed five minutes later by her row-fellow introducing his question with "As an artist....". The director did not, to his enormous credit, smirk even slightly.

When the questions were over, the French-Canadian veterinary research histopathologist to whom I am married and I kissed goodbye to our new friends and tripped out into the ever-cooling Montreal air.  "Hello", said  the histopathologist, shaking my hand. "As a veterinary research histopathologist, I wondered where you would like to have dinner."  "Well", I said, "as an unemployed marketing and /or advertising (delete as appropriate) freelance consultant type thing, I do not mind." (We went here and had soup and salad and steak and frites, oh my.)

The next morning, I cooked for a friend's party. In the afternoon, we went to see Inception and did not drink a bottle of Vitamin Water, which cost $4 and tasted like bison wee.  Inception was extremely funny and we laughed and laughed the whole way through.  I recommend you go, but only if you get a free ticket.  (One of the best bits is where a scientist makes a sleeping draught that that somehow manages to knock you out for a week whilst "not interrupting your inner ear function". Believe me. Much much funnier than it sounds.)

After the cinema we went to the bookshop, which spent over 23 minutes trying to drive us out back out into the Montreal night with a cunning combination of awkwardly-placed Céline Dion biographies, incomprehensible gift cheeseboards and Michael Bublé, the Canadian housewives' favourite, singing "Desperado" by the Eagles through the 'soundsystem'.  I bought Daphne du Maurier novels, and the histopathologist, a book about science. 

Later that day, we went to a late Thanksgiving dinner. I entered carrying baskets of muffins and sprouts and meringues in my delicate monkey hands.  We ate the Thanksgiving food and then we played a game that we only realised was a drinking game after we'd stopped playing it called "What the F*ck" (their coy asterisks). It involved reading out questions in a book and then arguing in a lively style about important topics like whether would rather lose your right arm or your left leg.  I am, as it happens, quite a fan of this style of questioning*, but even I fell silent when confronted with these two beauties.

 Here they are, reproduced in full, for you to enjoy (and ponder!): 

Question 1

Would you rather receive a phone call from:

 a) the mayor of your local town; or 

b) Satan

Question 2

What would you rather wrestle in straw bales with?  

a) a trained and oiled Sumo wrestler; or 

b) a pony.

And with that, I say: 

Pip "Satan, obv" Pip

NWM

* "Who do you like more? Me or the cat?" "What's your favourite, bread or cheese?" "Of what you have done today, what has been your favourite bit?" "Who's your favourite?" "If you had to decide between biscuits or cake, which one would it be?" "What's more likely, ghosts or homeopathy?". Etc. 

I receive a letter from a neighbour

WARNING: I am obsessed with noisy neighbours and how fucking irritating they are. This is probably quite boring unless you also find noisy neighbours annoying and/or enjoy a poorly-written ill-focused rant.  If you do not, I would come back tomorrow, when I will be doing something else  - probably involving a biscuit and/or a Golden Eagle. Perhaps both. 



Either I am surprisingly intolerant, or I have been blessed with shite neighbours. First up there was Twat Boy in Brixton, swiftly followed by his Amsterdam twin, the clog-dancing sexyboy De Twat. The neighbours in the Quebec countryside are so far away from us that we can only just hear the tinkling of their miniature watermill water feature over the roar of passing Harley owners, so they are OK.

In Montreal, however, we are blessed with two of the most gigantic fuckwits ever to draw breath; these knob-ends live below us with two annoying dogs (bored and badly trained), and a propensity to get all their screamingly boring friends out in the "yard" to "drink beer" under our bedroom window at 4am. When they are not doing that, they are having screaming matches; he is the most boring little man, and she a screaming Mexican underwear designer, so you can imagine what that's like.

Next to us live two artistic types. They have just moved in with their daughters. The husband is nice. He is an actor and director with eyes pointing in different directions and eventful hair.  The wife lowers her eyes when we come out of the door and does not say hello; sometimes she does work for a place "where spectators become engaged citizens through the power of theatre". I do not think we would have a lot in common.  The daughters are children, and are as children are.

They have just started doing a lot of building work. If I was a normal person with a job and out all day, and not someone aimlessly waiting day after day for my Canadian residency to come through whilst 90% of my friends are skipping about on another continent (yes, I am bored, so bored in fact that I am about to slip into the Slough of Despond), I would be out all day and therefore not here to listen to:

• banging, endless banging
• knocking on the back door (only accessible if you come through the downstairs garden and up the stairs, i.e. very difficult to do unless you are a burglar), revealing a wild-eyed building contractor whose accent I do not understand asking me if he can carry his logs up our staircase;
• banging and ringing on the front door, revealing a sad-eyed young chap asking me if it is my BMW and/or truck blocking in his green van, and if it is not, would I mind knocking on the neighbour's door every 10 minutes or so to check if they are back to deliver a message on his behalf?

But I am in, and I have to listen to it, and it is a bit annoying.  But yesterday I saw the man with the eventful hair. He was charming. Apologetic.  Sympathetic. Absolutely clear that should the noise be desperately intrusive, we should phone him immediately and tell him.    It was nice and we had a friendly and understanding neighbourchat.

That was enough, as it happens. But then the letter from the wife! The lady helping people get engaged through theatre!  My.  The problem is this. The letter is absolutely correct. It is polite, it is clear, it is friendly. But I am not pre-disposed to like her, and it is affecting my ability to read her letter with reasonable eyes:

"You may have heard a bit of noise coming from our  house over the past two days.  I apologize for the dusturbance.  Al and I (and our two daughters E and B) have embarked on a renovation project that may last as long as two months."

Their daughters are about 8 and 5. I am not sure they have opinions about for e.g. the placing of joists and girders. (Talking of joists and girders, here is a joke.)  Is this not a bit fey? I am not going to be sympathetic to fucking massive amounts of noise because E and B are 'involved'.

"Our contractor, D, works from 7.30am - 4.30pm Monday to Friday. I am afraid that between now and Christmas there will be a fair amount of banging, sawing, etc ... coming from our house during those times."

Yes. It is a fair amount. 7.30 is legal in Quebec so even though it is fucking ridiculous, there isn't much I can do about it.  It is so loud, and so violent, that it makes things fall off my kitchen counter.  I have no need for an alarm clock.  Christmas? 

"Again, I apologize ro any inconvenience this may cause you and I invite you to communicate with me or with my husband A if you ever feel that the work is having a particularly negative impact on your life."

I do not know what to do with this.  It feels passive aggressive, but maybe it is not.  Maybe it is just very polite and slightly formal (and a bit la-la, but then she does engage citizens in the power of biscuits via the jizz of theatre for a living).  What I actually want to say is: "Get it, absolutely no problem, hope your new bedroom is very nice - but can you just let me know how long the REALLY loud stuff is going to go on for, 'cos then I can piss off to the country and get away from it."  But can I? I do not know.

Pip "not really a moral dilemma" Pip

NWM