All this--and beauty too

Remember the teen flick "Titanic"? In the North Atlantic chill the heroine twirled about the deck in a gauzy dress, and the sinking ship filled in an orderly, level way with crystal-clear water. Yes, parts of it were pretty silly. The bits I really liked, though, were almost incidental–the scenes with the machinery. How did they do that, those shots below decks with the monumentally beautiful coal-fired steam engines, the tall brass pillars of the pistons, the great steel flywheels?

As a little girl I recall being mesmerized for hours by similar engines, this time on the seagoing paddle-wheel ferry that plied between mainland England and the island my family hailed from. Never mind the ocean view from on deck–as soon as the boat got under way I was down at the open engine-room door, spellbound by the massive, flying machinery. The huge brass pistons lunged, the flywheels spinning the shaft of the paddle-wheels. There was always a secret shiver of fear that all might break free, wreaking dreadful havoc. The brass was polished to within an inch of its life. Not a speck of dirt was visible anywhere. The whole room roared and clanked with life, and was fragrant with hot machine oil.

There’s something very fine about the unintentional beauty of well-kept machinery. Above all, it’s functional, engineered to very accurate specifications and fulfilling its purpose for many years, like an obedient and faithful animal.

On a visit to the Mediterranean island of Malta recently I got to know the famous yellow buses that form its transit system, a marvel relied on by tourists and locals alike. It’s cheap, frequent and reliable, which is all the more amazing because the buses are over fifty years old.. Made in England, they’re lovingly maintained by skilled local mechanics who have to make all their own parts to keep them in running order. Bright yellow, picked out with orange trim, each bus is adorned with masses of glittering chrome. Each one is different, but they all shine like mirrors. It’s obvious that each bus is somebody’s baby. The driver’s cab is a shrine--garlands, lights, statues, medals, pictures of saints and family members.

It’s a wild ride; as the bus swings round the bends you stand a good chance of sliding out–there’s no door, and the old leather seats are burnished to a fine polish like chestnuts. The manual gear lever, tall and slender, has to be wrestled into position with much grinding of gears and some nervous glances from passengers. You’ll see a local get on, sink thankfully into a seat and promptly cross himself. Or a nun pull out a rosary and begin to pray. These people obviously know a great deal about the buses and aren’t leaving anything to chance.

These old buses will disappear soon. Since Malta’s joined the European Union they’ll be legislated out of business, but it’s worth a trip to Malta just to see them, besides being a wonderfully intimate way to see the island.

Islands seem to breed colourful workhorse buses–perhaps the most artistic are the Tap-taps of Haiti with their bright hand-painted decorations and vivid slogans painted in Creole on the front.
Let’s not overlook our own home-grown brand of fine old machinery. The last locomotive of the Grand Trunk Railroad, the Moccasin, sits on a few yards of the original track on Highway #2 just west of Upper Canada Village (which also has a dazzling antique car display of its own on Transport Day, this year on Sunday August 12th.) Fancy a trip on a working steam train? The Hull-Wakefield train runs on a daily basis in the summer and early fall, with original cars and locomotive. It travels at a stately pace, with a fine plume of steam, enabling riders to appreciate the knockout scenery on the way. Jolly Tours runs a day trip with dinner in October, if you like to go in a group. The highlight of the trip, for the machinery fans, is the up-close and personal check of the locomotive as it’s slipped on to the turntable in Wakefield, and four strong young people spin it slowly round to face south for the homeward trip to Hull.

We’re getting to appreciate these gems of engineering much more. Speed and convenience, after all, aren’t everything. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to give my 11-year-old VW van a hug.

Conspiracy theory

Harry's posted to Iraq;
Wrong DNA? He won't be baq.

Weird, or what?

This is what happens when you let two eccentric grammarians loose on a cruise ship.

When is a tip not a tip?

The ground under the traveller's feet is shifting at warp speed. Before you embark on a bargain trip, consider this:

Fares have been kept low by ruthless pruning on the travel operators' part. First the in-flight meals went, and the pillow and blanket. Next, you paid extra to book a particular seat, and some more to get a little extra leg-room. Then miscellaneous taxes were surreptitiously added to the tantalizingly low offer price, bringing a "bait" price of 89 pounds sterling to just under 200 pounds.

What's left to cut? People, that's who.

Some airlines pay their desk staff minimum wage and cut back on staffing so there aren't enough personnel at check-in. The ones that are there figure they're not paid enough to take grief from the public--or to help them when flights get cancelled or delayed. Airline rules mandate a hotel when your flight's cancelled or delayed overnight--but just try getting one.

Enter the bribe. A tip, offered up-front when the going gets rough, sweetens the day a little for harrassed staff and taxi despatchers, and can make the difference between your sleeping on the airport floor and a clean bed in the right city.

I discovered this quite by chance, asking the despatcher at the head of a long taxi line, with the clock ticking, for change for a twenty so I could give him a tip. Immediately we had a cab. Our bags were whipped into the trunk and we were off. Incredibly, we made a flight fifty miles away that took off in an hour and a half--and this despite another line-up there to check in, and excruciatingly painstaking security.

So--word to the wise: Pack a handful of twenties when you travel. Remember the working stiff on minimum wage who's enabling you to ride for that low fare. Just as you now pay for your own in-flight meal, you are now going to be subsidizing the pay of the airline staff.

The difference between a tip and a bribe? Timing--and discretion, that's all.

And this in the Land of the Free, fast becoming a banana republic.

The furry dogmother.

This, retrieved from http://charlottegill.com

My late lamented furry grandson. Hated to be tied up. Hated not to have me right there where he could see me. The result was that he'd lie in the exit doorway of the hardware store till I came out, tripping up the village's old ladies.

What a character. I miss him.

Wash and...where?

Alex, my American son, roams the deserts of Arizona working for La Migra, chasing Mexicans.

Visiting him last winter I learned that you have to check uniform pants for live ammo before putting them in the dryer.

Another little irony is that the Border Patrol uniforms are made in...Mexico.

Bad press

Found, in a corner of my favourite used bookstore, The Mutiny on Board H.M.S.Bounty, by none other than William Bligh himself. What a great page-turner!


Bligh had to get his story out before the mutineers reappeared and aired their side of things. Naturally he presents himself as an able and concerned skipper whose mens' heads got turned by the lovelies of Tahiti (and who could blame them?). Not at all the ogre he was reputed to be, more like Santa Claus.


Know what? This was an experienced sailor in love with the sea, whose aim was to keep his 90-foot ship intact, and his crew alive and well (no small feat when thousands died of scurvy on long voyages). The Bounty survived a month in terrifying storms trying to round Cape Horn, and failing. Quit? No, Bligh simply turned the ship around and sailed clear across the south Atlantic to South Africa, reaching Tahiti by almost circumnavigating the globe.


After the mutiny Bligh and eighteen others (mostly the "idlers", tradesmen who happened to work on a seagoing ship) were cut adrift in a small open boat with five days' rations. So overloaded was it that the sea came to within seven inches of the gunn'ls. And this in open, uncharted ocean, with storms, sharks, hostile natives on every islet--and the Great Barrier Reef.


Forty-one days later, after subsisting on a cup of water and half a slice of bread a day each, plus whatever seabirds they could capture, Bligh brought all but one of these castaways alive (one man having been killed by natives) to Timor, 3,600 miles to the west.


This is the kind of leader I'd pick to run the USA right now. Foul tempered, abusive and violent, maybe. People skills? None. But a committed man who'd not lose a single seaman under his command if he could help it. Determined, skilful and courageous to boot. Where are these men when we need them? Compare that with the needless waste of soldiers' lives in Iraq today.


Cuddly, no--but the man had a wife and six, count 'em, six, daughters. Go figure.

Kitty corner

And now, by popular demand, cat pictures:

Mom's the word.

You know those calls--the ones where you hop out of the shower and dash, dripping, into the bedroom, grab the receiver and are greeted by...silence. You should put the phone down at this point, but curiosity gets the better of you, until finally a bright young female voice you don't recognize asks "And how are you today?"

'Tis the season. But here's a new twist: tapping away at the keyboard I was interrupted this evening, first by the silence, then a chirpy child of oh, ten, saying, "Hi, Mom!"

Last time I checked I had three adult children, at least one of whom communicates mostly in gruff monosyllables. Was there something in my past I'd blocked out? A hidden pregnancy, perhaps? A forgotten promise to raise someone else's child as mine?

It's a new telemarketing twist, a kind of capitalist kiddie-porn where they launch the underage at your heartstrings, this time for leukemia research. Realization finally dawned (OK, I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree). "I've got three children, " I said, "and you're not one of them."

Years ago one of my darlings, a wee slip of a thing at the time, decided that since some of her playmates got to call their mothers by their first names perhaps she would too. I soon disabused her of this nonsense. "Mother," "Mom," "Ma" or whatever is one heck of a proud title that not everyone's entitled to call me, just the three people closest to my heart. Anyone can (and usually does) call me by my first name, but few get to use the M word.

I don't know who thought up this fool promo. It got my attention--my goat, too.

Ladies and gentlemen...

I give you...Mr. and Mrs. Turpin.

The hand-made wedding

Tree planters are a tight-knit little tribe. When they roll into town-Port Hardy, B.C.--at the weekends, the locals tend to lock up their daughters, valuables and movables, and bartenders are on alert.

Despite this gypsy tag, they comprise a startlingly large proportion of very talented and creative people--writers, musicians, dressmakers, cooks and so forth. In addition they have a strong tradition of looking out for one another. In grizzly-bear territory this comes naturally.
Everyone knows--or knows of--everyone else. At parties the planters are like family; the hangers-on at the fringes are the wannabes.

So when my elder daughter and her fellow planter man, Kevin, decided "What the heck, let's get married," at a month's notice, the planter "family" kicked into high gear.
The ceremony, and the dinner party that followed, took place at a modest community centre in Vancouver--albeit one with a knockout view of the harbour.

Friends designed and made the bride's dress, a stunning white silk bias-cut creation. A friend baked the sinfully lush chocolate wedding cake. Family and roommates rolled and dipped 160 Belgian chocolate truffles to decorate the tables. A hairdresser friend came to the apartment to work magic on the hairstyles of the bride and the women in the wedding party, and would accept no payment except a small tip and a bottle of wine. There were many, many other splendid gestures--in part, no doubt, because the bride and groom had announced that they wanted no gifts, the day being not only about them but especially about the guests, who'd travelled from as far as the little outports of Newfoundland and the deserts of Arizona.

The men, too, looked gorgeous: tall, slim, groomed and, well, studly.

But one of the happiest guests was the groom's mother, Kathleen. Kathleen lives a simple life back there in Newfoundland. Her wants are few. She doesn't drink or use makeup. But her one vice is chocolate. I gathered up the unconsidered truffles and set aside some more chocolate cake for her. She went home with a bag full of booty and a grin from ear to ear.

"The best wedding I ever attended" was the frequently-heard verdict.

Lies my doctor told me

(1) Milk is good for you.
Fact: Milk probably causes breast and prostate cancer (incidence now one in eight).
Rates for both in China (where environmental pollution levels are high): 1:10,000. Until they start to eat what we eat, then they catch up. Normally, they don't touch cow's milk.

(2) You need milk for your bones.
Fact: The more milk you drink, the higher your risk of hip fracture. You read that right--higher. Top of the hip-fracture stakes are USA and New Zealand, who drink enough milk to sink the Titanic. Bottom of the list--the winners--are Tokyo and Singapore, who don't drink milk. This was shown in a Harvard study, people.

(3) A mammogram may save your life.
A new study from the Cochrane Library, a non-profit group based in the UK, found that for every 2000 women having a mammogram, only one would have her life prolonged. Well, OK, but they also found that another ten women would have potentially devastating and unnecessary treatment, undergoing surgery, radiation and chemotherapy after screening when--in their case--the changes discovered on screening would present no danger to them in their lifetimes. So much for preventive screening.

(4) Chemotherapy for breast cancer is 30% lifesaving.
Not! If 100 breast-cancer patients are given chemotherapy, only ten will get any benefit. And chemotherapy has a 1.3% risk of causing leukemia, all by itself. Plus, a recent study showed that not only is chemotherapy famous for causing hair loss and vomiting, but it's also associated with frequent trips to hospital emergency rooms, causing millions of dollars to be spent in treating its other side effect--life-threatening infections from bone-marrow suppression.

Stay away from doctors. And stay away from milk of all other species, even the organic sort. It was never meant to feed humans. Knowing this may save your life. Why isn't this widely known? Follow the money.
Trust me. I am--was--a doctor.

And go read "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. Some wacko? No--a lifetime nutrition expert out of Cornell University in New York State.

And the winner is...

Is there anyone who hasn't broken out in a muck sweat, or had their ears turn a telltale shade of beet red, when being called on to stand up and say something before a roomful of critics? Tonight was presentation night, three minutes of fame, when each of the students in Sra. Romo-Gonzales' Spanish class spoke--in halting Spanish--about a topic of their choice.

Some were ambitious: big photo spreads, handcrafts from Iqaluit, even a wooden hammer created specially for the event with a jig-saw. Tales of cats, of epic journeys, memorable holidays. (No, the cats weren't mine.) Each "turn" drew friendly applause. We all vied for the Presentation of the Evening award. I thought for sure most of the women would bring out endearing pictures of above-average children, and having three answering that description I decided not to go that route.

But the winner, hands down, was Sam.

Sam is a construction worker by day, and though he enjoys the classes immensely they're a challenge, and he tries not to make himself too conspicuous. He works on high roofs without a second thought, so he's not afraid to give it a go when he's called on, and stumbles through the exercises with a strong Canadian accent, looking mildly astonished when it's the correct answer.

Sam was the one who talked about his family. Showed us the little group--wife , himself and three children--and explained slowly who each of them was, their names and ages. More photos, this time the two dogs. "They don't eat much," he pointed out, "they're little dogs." Questions: "What are the dogs called?" There was a quick consultation with the teacher. "Go ahead, just call them what you call them at home." "'Puppy'," he said, "and this one's 'Doggy'".

He got the most laughter, and easily the longest applause.

Antonio Banderas, please call.

Busy weekend: there was this assignment for an on-line writing course from NYC, plus a short essay for the Spanish class I'm taking (much to the derision of my son Alex, who's bilingual). OK for him, he has a lovely Colombian chica (see earlier post). I demand a date with Antonio Banderas, that's the only way I'll ever get proficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio

Plus there was the Beeb's "Pride and Prejudice" to watch on DVD. Since I don't have TV--I refuse to pay good money to have dross piped into the house--I rent movies and have only just got round to watching it. Brilliant. The very best scene in the whole series has to be the quadrille. For the crackle of sheer sexual tension it's rivalled only by good flamenco.

Darcy put me in mind of Heathcliff, in that all he's called on to do is glower--but then again, who could resist the allure of all that lovely real estate? (Note to self: my next cat will be called Darcy.) And you have to love those horses. Whoever had the horse franchise had it made in the shade. Mr. Bennet was lovely. I know someone exactly like Mrs. Bennet, and I've met the Ugly Sisters, too; unfortunately their ilk is alive and well in the UK.

Now I have to buckle down and actually read the book.

River dance.

Picture this: on the van radio, the andante movement from Mahler's 2nd symphony. The sky, deep peaches and purple in the twilight, the trees silhouetted black. The river is calm, reflecting the sky, and in this peach-and-purple mirror a family of beavers is cruising around their lodge, their snouts carving black vees in the surface. On top of the lodge sits the sentry, like the conductor of the beaver dance, their one last fling before they're cooped up in the stick and mud dome for the winter.

Que hay de nuevo?

I'm looking for the upside-down question mark on the keyboard. There's a tilda and an accent grave (how do you get it to sit on top of the required letter?) but none of the inverted punctuation essential to Spanish.

Victor Borge, the musician/comedian, made a classic contribution to punctuation some years back, narrating a steamy encounter with sound effects for each mark. He would have had a field day with Spanish.

This is all because I'm in the beginning stages of learning Spanish, my son being smitten with a chica from Bogota, Diana Maria. Diana didn't speak much English for a while; our conversations, when face-to-face, consisted of lots of hand gestures, plenty of hasty drawings and dips into the dictionary. But somehow we managed to makes ourselves understood.

The trick is to start thinking like a Spaniard, and especially to really start making the lips and jaw do some work--no use muttering between tight lips and making a half-assed stab at it--no, learning a foreign language is a serious relationship that requires commitment. Never make fun of someone who speaks with an accent, the saying goes, they speak more languages than you do.

I'm eagerly awaiting Speaking with the Hands, 101. I want to get going on the street with my cellphone, waving my arms even though the person I'm speaking to can't see me. How can I possibly be fluent in Spanish if I can't talk with my hands?

Watch it!

The UK has the distinction of having the thickest concentration of CCTVs of any country on earth. This is because it has (a) a thriving yob culture, with graffiti and vandalism and (b) because whoever's installing all these cameras seems to be able to get away with it. Rarely do you hear an outcry about invasion of privacy--it's all accepted as part of the 21st century landscape.

The first thirty years of my childhood were spent in England. I would not wish to return to live there, but it has left its share of memories--most connected with people long dead. Whoever said, "You can never go back" was right on; you can replay the reel only in your head. For this reason I sometimes get a little impatient with expats hankering for their native land, the simple reason being that it's not there any more.

All those CCTVs do have a function: some are accessible as webcams offering a mini-tour of my old haunts. From time to time I'll access a corner of the street where I lived as a child. The corner store and the red mailbox have gone, and traffic lights have sprouted up to control the burgeoning flow of cars. Today a lone pedestrian climbs the hill, unaware, of course, that he's being idly followed from across the Atlantic. You don't see many pedestrians these days--everyone's in cars.

I love Google's satellite feature, too. Zooming in on my home town, I'm uneasy at what's been demolished to wedge more and more little houses in. The big old 18th-century house my godfather lived in, with its rambling gardens, wide lawns, and flowerbeds that tipsy revellers would drive over after Christmas parties (that was another era) has vanished. I can still recall the thrill of learning to ride a bicycle on the grass there, of wobbling along and finally mastering it. Now there are seventeen little townhouses where it used to be, all with paved parking spaces; there are no lawns. It reminds me of Dr. Zhivago, where the hero returns after the Russian revolution to find his house occupied by another four families.

Ain't technology great?

If you want to cruise the webcams of the British Isles, a good place to start is the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk

Wait a minute...

Does anyone else find it ironic that a quoted opinion (whether valid or not) that the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) advocated promulgating Islam by violence should arouse a storm of disagreement-- in the form of violence and death threats?

So much hostility perpetrated by so many religions, except--notably--Buddhism, to its eternal credit.

This isn't at all about religion--like N.Ireland, it's all about young men and territory. How many more people have to die before we brake sharply at the edge of the abyss?

Travelling hopefully

The Slow Food movement seems to be gaining ground; hard on the heels of this success I should like to propose a new Slow Travel movement.

Let's face it--air travel has become an endurance test. Way back, when I was a girl of, oh, maybe twelve or so, the family travelled to the Channel Islands. These are geographically (and architecturally) part of France and lie amid some of the trickiest navigation in the Channel, off the coast of Normandy. They were occupied by the Germans in WWII; possession of radios was streng verboten, and the Brits used to dismantle them and secrete them in teapots.

But I digress. Back then the plane was a seven-seater made of what my Dad liked to call "canvas and dope". Air travel was an Event. Passengers strolled out onto the apron and climbed aboard. No security, no waiting, nothing but politeness all round. Very amateur, looking back on it. At the destination--Alderney--we'd have to circle a time or two while an anxious herdsman ran, frantically waving, after the cows, to get them off the grass airstrip. (Yes, they were Guernsey cows.)

Look where we are now: arrive two hours ahead for domestic flights; show all kinds of ID, get grilled about your bags; remove all the little items that make a trip pleasant, find the security lineup that's moving the fastest, line up in the chicane like a herd of cattle in an abattoir, take off your shoes, run your bags through the scanner, find a food shop to get a meal to take on board, walk 2 km to the gate. Not that I'm not grateful for all the precautions, and quite see the necessity for them...but do you see what I'm getting at? There comes a point where the trip itself, especially for a vacation, for heaven's sake, becomes a deterrent.

Enter slow travel. I've just returned from a rail trip across Canada--Cornwall, Ontario, to Vancouver in style, stopping off in Jasper, just because not to stop in Jasper would have been a crime. I tell you, this is the way of the future; there's time to look around and take in all that incredible scenery; an opportunity to meet and talk to other people you wouldn't normally take the time to get to know; lavish meals served on real china with real knives and forks (no chance of pronging the engineer to death here) at a table with a damask cloth, by cheerful homegrown staff who live in cities along the route. In short, an adventure of a most agreeable kind.

So if you can swing it, consider a slow trip sometime. It'll transform you from a tourist to a traveller.

Lucky, lucky, lucky

Last year I was persuaded, in a weaker moment, to go door-to-door soliciting funds for a charity. It was a snowy March, and my buddy Oscar, the red heeler, was game for the expedition. I found out several interesting things: (a) it's a great way to meet all your neighbours, (b) there are a fair number of single older women--myself included--living alone on the street (c) the people with the fanciest homes are the stingiest (the converse applies, too) and (d) a surprising number of folks don't bother to shovel their front steps. All winter. Which makes the entrance as welcoming as a drawbridge studded with nails.

Some of the older women were starved for company, more so because of the winter, and haled me inside with offers of tea and a chat. There and then I decided that visiting was something I could do.

A loaf of home-made bread makes a handy Trojan horse. Since the first loaf was traded for a cup of tea I've been having a wonderful time; what started as a feeling of obligation has morphed into a slew of new friends. One in particular encouraged me to cross Canada by train, which I'll be doing shortly (I hope it wasn't a hint). She's a thirty-year-old trapped in a seventy-something body that's seen better days, but she's always on the lookout for new and interesting angles. One hot afternoon I asked tentatively whether she'd care for a swim in the river; I barely had time to draw breath before she was packed and ready, complete with a quickly-assembled picnic. We hit the road in the VW van, free as birds, delighted as heck not to be stuck in some air-conditioned, windowless room toiling for our daily bread and missing all this.

As June said, you can work all your life and not have the sense to stop when you should stop, and never get to live it up like this.

It doesn't get any better.